Christ the King

The Solemnity of Christ the King The Liturgical Year Comes to an End This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. It is one of many opportunities the Catholic Liturgical Church year offers to each of us to consider really living differently. Yet, for many Catholics who commemorate the Feast, it is just one more somewhat esoteric celebration which we go through every year at this time. The feast is a relatively recent one. It was instituted in 1925, by Pope Pius XI. During its celebration, many Catholics go on procession, singing praises, while a priest carries the Eucharistic in a monstrance to pray for peace. The Catholic teaching of receiving time as a gift from God is one of the many things which make us counter-cultural. In fact, the number of things which make us counter-cultural is increasing as the West abandons its foundations in Christendom and embraces a secularist delusion. Our actually choosing to live the Christian year, in a compelling way, can become a profoundly important form of missionary activity in an age which has become deluded by the barrenness of secularism. A robust, evangelically alive and symbolically rich practice of living liturgically can invite our neighbors to examine their lives and be drawn to the One who is its source - Jesus Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End - as the emptiness of a life without God fails to fulfill the longing in their own hearts. In a particular way, Catholics are invited to mark time by the great events of the Christian faith in a Liturgical calendar. However, like so much that is contained within the treasury of the Catholic Church; the practice must be understood in order to be fully received as a gift. Jesus Christ is King and we are the seeds of His Kingdom scattered in the garden of a world which is waiting to be born anew. The Church, as a mother and a teacher, invites us to live the rhythm of the liturgical year in order to help us walk into a deeper encounter with the Lord and bring the whole world with us into the new world of the Church. The Church really IS the Mystical Body of the Risen Christ. That Body is inseparably joined to the Head. Jesus Christ is alive; he has been raised; and he continues His redemptive mission now through the Church, of which we are members. The early Catholics, before they were even called Christians, were referred to as the Way. (Acts 9:2, Acts 11:26) That was because they lived a very different way of life. A Way of Life which drew men and women to the One whose name they were soon privileged to bear, Jesus the Christ. We do not really go to Church; we live in the Church and go into the world, to bring the world, through the waters of new birth, into the Church as a new home, a new family. There, people will find the grace needed to begin a whole new way of living.  Christians believe in a linear timeline in history. There is a beginning and an end, a fulfillment, which is, in fact, a new beginning. The final Sunday of the church Year, the Feast of Christ the King, is the day when we are invited to commemorate His sovereignty over all men, women and children. Jesus Christ has come. Jesus Christ is coming. Jesus Christ will come again. Jesus Christ is Lord of All. Next week, we will celebrate the First Sunday of Advent, and begin the time of preparation for the great Feast of the Nativity of Our Savior. We are moving forward and toward His loving return. The Church, to use the beautiful imagery of the early Christian fathers, was birthed from the wounded side of the Savior on the Cross at Calvary's hill. Our Catholic liturgical year follows a rhythmic cycle which points us toward beginnings and ends. In doing so, it emphasizes important truths that can only be grasped through faith. Our Catholic faith and its Liturgical practices proclaim to a world hungry for meaning that Jesus Christ is the "Alpha", (the first letter of the Greek alphabet) and the "Omega" (the last letter), the beginning and the end. He is the Giver, the Governor, and the fulfillment of all time. In Him, the whole world is being made new and every end becomes a beginning for those with the greatest treasure, living faith. Those Baptized into Jesus Christ continue His redemptive mission until He returns to establish His Reign. We do this by living in His Body, the Church, and drawing the whole world into the New World beginning now. The Church is, in one of the early father's favorite descriptions, that "New World". This new family of the Church was then sent on mission. In our celebration of a Church Year, we not only remember the great events of the life, ministry and mission of the Lord, we also celebrate the life and death of our family members, the Saints, who have gone on before us, in the worlds of the Liturgy, "marked with the sign of redemption" as we pray in the Liturgy. They are models and companions for the journey of life and are our great intercessors; that "great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1) whom the author of the letter to the Hebrews extols. This is the heart of understanding the "communion of saints". As St. Paul reminded the Roman Christians, not even death separates us any longer. (Romans 8:38, 39) They will welcome us into eternity and help us along our daily path through both their example and their prayer. As we progress through liturgical time we are invited to enter into the great events of faith. So, on this last week of the year, through our readings and liturgical prayer, we are invited to reflect on the "last things"- death, judgment, heaven and hell. We do so in order to change, to be converted; to enter more fully into the Divine plan. Today, as the Western Church year ends, we celebrate the full and final triumph and return of the One through whom the entire universe was created - and in whom it is being "recreated" - and by whom it will be completely reconstituted and handed back to the Father at the "end" of all time. That end will mark the beginning of a timeless new heaven and a new earth when "He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death." (Revelations 21:4). As we move from one Church year to the next, we also move along in the timeline of the human life allotted to each one of us. We age, and the certainty of our own death is meant to illuminate our life and the certainty of the end of all time is meant to illuminate its purpose and culmination in Christ. For both to be experienced by faith we must truly believe in Jesus Christ, who is the beginning and the end. And when we do, death can become, as we move closer to it, something wonderful - a second birth. The Church Fathers were fond of a Latin phrase "Carpe Diem", which literally means "Seize the day." For we who are living in communion in Christ Jesus, that phrase can take on a whole new meaning. We always journey toward the "Day of the Lord", when He will return as King. We should seize that day as the reference point for all things on this last week of the year, and we can live our lives as though His day is the milestone and marker for all that we do, revealing the path along which we become new - beginning now.