Christ the King

See Commentary on Luke 23:35-43 in Luke 23:26-49


Homily 1 - 2007

When I was a student in College in Ballarat in the late 40s, the Feast of Christ the King was a big deal. There used to be a procession around St Pat’s College oval, attended by students from the local schools, and parishioners not just from Ballarat parishes but also from surrounding areas; and it all climaxed with a special address and benediction given by Bishop O’Collins.

The tradition was still going strongly in the 60s when I came back to Ballarat as a young priest. At that time Vatican II was happening, the lay apostolate was flourishing; and we came to realise that celebrating Christ as King called for more than personal conversion. It called for engagement with our world. Christ’s Kingship was a call for all to make of our world a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace – as the Preface of today’s Mass will soon remind us. The words echo those used by Pope John XXIII in his encyclical letter, written in 1963, on “Peace in the World”.

Looking back on those years, I remember feeling then a great sense of hope. In the mid-60s, we put on, here in Ballarat, a series of annual Christian Social Weeks. The theme of the first one was “A New Age of the Human Person”. Many of us really did hope for a new age, a springtime, in the Church, that would usher in a better world – a world of truth and life, a world of justice, love and peace.

Things haven’t turned out as we dreamed. From the late-60s on, the Baby Boomers grew into adulthood. Their steadily-growing numbers eventually overwhelmed the influenceof the somewhat inflexible Catholic sub-culture in which many of us grew up. With notable exceptions, the new generation did not warm to authority figures, institutions or to open-ended commitments. [By the 70s, the pool of key leaders for the formative lay apostolate movements had dried up, almost over-night.]

Immersed in the changing culture ourselves, we did not realise what was happening. We were confused, and did not know how to respond. [As we have grown into and beyond middle age, we have felt the temptation to lose our commitment to engage with the world to which we belong and for which we are responsible, and to direct our energies instead to keeping the Church afloat.]

The wonderful thing is that we are all still here. In some ways we’re graduates of the “School of Hard Knocks”. Those of us with a reasonable number of years under our belt have known our share of hurts. The greater were our hopes and aspirations, our dreams and expectations, the greater have been our disappointments and pain.

But that is not the whole story. If we are here today celebrating Christ the King, it is because most of us have grown wiser across the years. We have come to understand better the One whose kingship we proclaim.

Today’s Gospel illustrates the point. Luke mentioned, almost as an aside, Above him there was an inscription: This is the king of the Jews. Above him … that tortured, dehumanisedindividual, being executed as a political criminal – jeered atby his religious and political masters, mocked by the military, the enforcers of law and order, and abused by one of the terrorists crucified beside him..

We know why he was crucified – precisely because he had dreamt of, hoped for, and poured out his energies to bring about a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.

That’s part of the answer. The other part of the reason why he was there was because he chose not to run away, not to renege on his message of love, justice and peace, not to lose his nerve, not even to lose hope or to surrender his dream. He hoped against hope. He trusted God. His integrity in the face of unthinkable suffering reveals his mysterious depths, his sheer perfection and his profound attractiveness - more clearly than could success or triumph, or whatever.

As I see you here today, celebrating Christ the King, I find myself wonderfully nourished [not just] by the sheer goodness of so many of you [but especially by your option for integrity, by your journey into wisdom, your trust in God and your hope in people.] Today’s Gospel spells out clearly that what God calls us to and empowers us for is not to succeed but to be authentic, to seek the truth, and especially to love, with all that that means: connecting, rejoicing in difference, forgiving, hoping.

When we are that, our world is a better place and closer to the Kingdom of God. Without that, social structures are empty. We are not resigned to what has been. We are used to, and practised in, hoping … We have learnt to leave the practical shape of outcomes in the hands of our ever-surprising God.

Now, as we move into Eucharist, we surrender ourselves once more to the Spirit of God who leads us… As we yield again to the mystery that unfolded there on the cross, the Spirit draws us closer to the heart of Jesus… With and in him, we are conformed, ever more deeply, to the mystery we call God.


Homily 2 - 2010

I believe that words like almighty, omnipotent, all-powerful, when applied to God or Jesus, are not helpful, and can even be quite misleading – though the problem may lie in how we understand them, particularly, if we haven’t paused much to think about them. We have to be careful with any words we use about God. God completely escapes our grasp. We are on safer ground when we say what God is not than what God is. Of course, unless we say nothing,we can’t help having a go at saying some things about God – but, in the back of our heads, we need to be clear that we don’t really know what we are talking about.

Take the word love, for example. We struggle to learn even what human love can be – it’s a life-long task. Children, adolescents and mature adults might all use the same word, but it means something quite different for each of them. Maturing means discovering that love is not what we used to think it was. Divine love is not just the most mature human love multiplied by infinity. It’s qualitatively different.

What about power, then (since this is the Feast of Christ the King)? Perhaps the best we can do is discover what it’s not. As we spontaneously think of it, we usually see power as the possibility to impose, to control, perhaps, even, to restrict people’s freedoms. The possibility to do that comes, not from who people are, but from what they’ve got – strength or military arms or numbers of supporters (or voters) or legislation or wealth or whatever. But that sort of power is a negative thing – it limits. It doesn’t create; it doesn’t enable growth or set free.

Real power would be a positive thing. Real power would enable and enhance growth, create, set free, give life. When you think about it, that is what true love would do, too. In fact, only love can give life, enable and enhance growth, set free, create. That might be a better way to approach God’s power. In that case, there would be no difference between all mighty and all loving. They would be the same thing.

But that sets up a bit of a paradox. Love at its best is unconditional, and consistent – it never draws back. It also leaves the beloved free. So love at its best is also, from the negative point of view, powerless. It is vulnerable. We might say that true power is also powerless. True power is vulnerable.

Isn’t that the kind of power exhibited by Jesus? Look at today’s Gospel: Jesus – vulnerable, victim (and deliberately determined not to run away from being victimised and tortured and mocked) – but consistently, insistently, loving – no violence, no vindictiveness, simply forgiveness.

Is it power? Does it give life? Can it bring out the best in people, energise them, set them free? I can answer that. So can you. That is why we are here today.

Yet, even Jesus’ love, Jesus’ radical power, for all its truth, for all its maturity, is human. Divine love, divine power, is not less – but what they are essentially is totally beyond our imagining. We approach God always in wonder and in profound silence.


Homily 3 - 2013

Luke has presented a confronting scenario, and in the process has held up a mirror with which we can look more closely at ourselves.

The leaders jeered at him.  They were the religious establishment, the professionals well versed in determining right from wrong – not all that different from us who know our Scriptures, our catechism, what is a sin and what is not.  It reminds me of that incident in the creation story, where the serpent tempted our first parents: “You will be like gods, knowing good and evil”.  Would not knowing good and evil be a good thing, rather than a temptation?  Yet knowing good and evil sets us up to judge, to judge others – and to find them wanting.  The surer we are of our orthodoxy, the more dangerous we become.

The soldiers who had crucified Jesus were the same ones who then mocked him.  They were agents of the Roman Empire, an empire that prided itself on the peace it had brought the world, based firmly on its sense of justice and its ability to ensure law and order by means of its military might.  Yet, perhaps, those with power are not so good at discerning justice.  When you can virtually do what you want, justice too easily becomes what is good for you, or for your national interest.  Perhaps those under oppression, the ones who are victims of another’s power, are the ones most likely to perceive the requirements of true justice.

Yet even victims can get it wrong.  The two criminals hanging next to Jesus had questioned Rome’s justice.  Underdogs can be misled.  They can too easily seek to be top dogs, to change places; the oppressed become oppressors.  Since crucifixion was the penalty for revolt, both criminals crucified with Jesus had probably responded to Rome’s oppression with acts of terrorism, trying to overcome violence with violence.

Yet, exposure to the innocent, non-vindictive Jesus had evidently done something to one of the criminals – who began to see things differently.  “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  His request came from not only total powerlessness but total emptiness – he had no time to change his ways, to make up for his former hatred and violence.  Yet Jesus said to him: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Also present were the people watching Jesus, the crowd who had peacefully gathered to watch criminals getting what they no doubt deserved, and dying a tortured, dehumanising death.  What was going on inside that crowd?  Self-esteem can be bolstered by having others to look down on, to feel superior to, and to be more deserving than.  Likewise, the sense of belonging and social harmony can be safe-guarded by defining individuals or groups as undeserving and undesirable, by scapegoating them and excluding them from the inner-group.

Jesus, the human revelation of God, can handle sin; he can move beyond what is right and what is wrong. He can freely and unconditionally forgive.  But he cannot forgive those who see no need for forgiveness, who quietly congratulate themselves on their superior knowledge, their self-determined sense of justice, and their place on the moral high-ground.  Perhaps our hope lies in contemplating Jesus – the victim of the world’s violence.  After his resurrection he still bore the wounds in his hands and feet.  His kingship, confirmed by his Resurrection, was not a case of underdog becoming top dog – as disciples would sometimes like it to be.  It is nice, after all, to feel on the winning side.

What then, if not that?  Being disciples of this King is more a factor of breaking free from the addictive need to be better than, learning sensitivity to true justice by standing with those who are oppressed, letting go of the lie that violence can eliminate violence, and discovering a self-esteem that is nourished, not from feeling superior to others and excluding them, but from discovering the wonderful love that God has for us all.


Homily 4 - 2016

The Feast of Christ the King is something of a two-edged sword. It was instituted only in 1925 at a time when the Church felt itself oppressed and threatened by aggressive secular powers – Nazism, Fascism and Communism. The hope was that it would encourage Catholics to remain faithful to Christ even under pressure. The Church was not used to having little or no secular power. Since the time of Constantine, it had had a close relationship with world powers, at least in Europe, and had regularly tended to use that power to further its interests.

Jesus had been wary of secular power. He never used the title, Christ or Messiah or King, of himself, though occasionally the Gospel writers, and other Gospel characters, spoke of him in that vein. Indeed, when the apostle Peter had used the title Christ to describe his understanding of Jesus [at least in Mark’s Gospel], Jesus responded very lukewarmly; and immediately began to talk instead about his inevitable passion and death. If Jesus was to be called the Christ, he insisted it be on his terms – and in his terms he radically overturned the accepted expectations of kingship. Jesus’ understanding of power was not of coercive power but of the power of personal integrity, the power of love. He was not interested in power that could enforce conformity but only in the power that enabled growth in personal freedom and in love. And he was prepared to pay the price of what looked to the unconverted to be sheer powerlessness. He learnt that sense of power from his deep relationship with his Father. His call to the world was always to personal conversion and inner transformation.

Today’s Gospel passage is a clear case in point. The leaders, the soldiers, Pilate who had ordered the inscription of his crime to be nailed above his head, and one of the criminals crucified with him, all understood messianic power as coercive power, perhaps even bordering on the magic. They could not conceive of any other power. Only the second of the criminals, somehow impressed by the obvious integrity and inner authority of Jesus, saw through to the heart of Jesus and understood what he was about. To him, the converted one, the one who opened his heart and mind to the truth of Jesus, was Jesus able to assure salvation and promise that he would be with him in Paradise that day.

Jesus calls his disciples today to the same insight and integrity. He sends us on mission, on his mission. We would like at times to have the capacity to insist that our secular policy-makers and judges enforce on our fellow citizens what we regard as proper moral behavior. There was a time, perhaps, when we did have clout; but now our bishops seem to have lost any moral credibility they may once have possessed. And we no longer have the power of numbers, the so-called “Catholic vote”. If we wish to influence our fellow citizens, we have only the power of our integrity, our obvious concern for the good of all and of our example. If we want others to change, we need constantly to look to our personal and communal growth as human persons and as followers of Christ.

Pope Francis laments that we have increasingly lost the capacity to weep when confronted with the suffering of others. Did we ever have it? Or was it the enlightened leadership of the occasional statesman that ensured that some of our policies and laws were truly compassionate – with little real conversion having happened among the average citizens. Whatever about that, the task certainly confronts us now. We all need change, conversion. We all need to learn to listen respectfully to others, particularly to those we disagree with. We need to engage at some real level. We need the courage to share our values – not aggressively, but intelligently and compassionately, inspired honestly by Jesus’ vision of truth and life, of justice, love and peace.


 

Homily 5 - 2019

Today’s Feast of Christ the King is a recent Feast by Roman standards and was instituted only in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. He saw it as a Feast particularly for the laity, as a response to what he saw as the growing secularism and nationalism of the age [What’s new?]. When I was growing up, the Feast had been enthusiastically adopted by the growing Lay Apostolate movements. They saw it as an opportunity to emphasise the responsibility of everyone in the Church to work consciously and deliberately to shape society according to Christ’s values of love, justice, truth and freedom. The Second Vatican Council highlighted how this responsibility sprang from the God-given and inviolable dignity of every person, which demands in turn that all human interactions be based in love and justice, respect everyone’s freedom and lead to true and lasting peace.

Over the years following Vatican II, theologians continued to reflect on the God-given dignity of every person. They have stressed that we are sacred because our very being, our existence, is gift of God who is the source of all reality. To be created is to participate in the very being of God. Since, as we Christians realise, God is love, then, for God, being and loving are the same operation. By the simple fact of giving us existence and keeping us in existence, God necessarily gives us love. If we are at all, we are loved – and totally independently of anything we do. Jesus clearly presumed this basic fact in his challenging yet also beautiful comment, “Whatever you do the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me.”

Vatican II finished fifty-five years ago. More recently, more and more theologians are recognizing that, by the very fact of God’s creating, then not only human persons but everything that is created is the fruit, the concrete expression, of God, creating in and through Christ, “the Son that [God] loves”. Indeed, as we heard in today’s Second Reading, “…all things were created through him and for him – everything visible and everything invisible… and he holds all things in unity”.

In coming to terms with creation, the sheer power and energy of the Big Bang, discovered for us by scientists and cosmologists, is complemented by the poetic simplicity of the creation story as imaged by the authors of the Book of Genesis. The dust of the earth from which we humans and everything else on our planet are made turns out to be the dust from exploded stars. And when the Son of God eventually became human in Jesus, his humanity was likewise shaped from the dust of exploded stars.

It is not only human persons who are sacred – the whole universe is sacred. As the English Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, proclaimed many years ago, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God!” Everything can/should speak to us of God because everything has something of God.

Pope Francis, like so many contemporary theologians, has drawn the logical conclusion that it is our human responsibility to respect deeply and care lovingly for our world and its environment, with which our very existence is inextricably entwined. He is particularly concerned that those most effected by the escalating pollution and degradation of the atmosphere, our oceans and our land surface are the poor, the very ones least responsible for it. Listening to the overwhelming majority of scientists, he accepts the reality of our human contribution to the changing climate and urgently summons everyone to what he calls “ecological conversion”.

All this, unfortunately, remains so much “head-stuff” until we take time, in silence, to let it sink into our hearts, into our spirit. Our world is saturated with God; but for us to realize this, we need “eyes that see” and “hearts that understand”. We also need patience, flexibility to the will of God and willingness to be surprised by joy.