Homily: Christ the King 2013

Today the Church celebrates with great joy the Solemnity of Christ the King. It is the last Sunday of the liturgical year and, in many ways, the culmination. All of the feasts and all of the seasons of the Church Year in a way, celebrate and point to this reality, that Jesus Christ is the King of the Universe, the Lord of all. 

Every Mass is a celebration of this truth: Christ sits victorious upon the throne of heaven, for he has saved our souls by the power of God’s unconquerable love.

Every time we receive Holy Communion we should desire that this authority and power and glory of Christ should infuse every dimension of our life.  It is here that we show our loyalty and our allegiance to Christ our sovereign Lord.

I was in the classroom with 5^th graders talking to the children about the importance of Sunday Mass.  I asked, “is there anything more important than Sunday Mass? Is Sunday Mass more important than staying at home and playing video games?  Yes Father.  Is Sunday Mass more important than going to a Cleveland Browns game? Yes Father.  I then asked, “What else is attending Mass more important than” A bunch of hands went up, which is always good to see.  “Sunday Mass is more important than shopping,” one said.   Mass is more important than doing chores, one boy said grinning ear to ear.”  Sunday mass is more important than sleeping in even if you had a sleep over the night before and stayed up late talking, one girl said. 

Then I asked, is spending time with your family more important than Sunday Mass?  Some of the kids were a little slower to answer that one.  But we finally agreed that even though spending time with family is good, you need to go to Mass.  If a grandparent is in the hospital or nursing home, you should go to Mass then go visit them.

Then I asked, what if your mom or dad said, we aren’t going to Mass anymore, because I don’t like those priests at Saint Angela’s.  One young boy said, well, I would try to tell them that you aren’t so bad, Father, and that we should go anyway, because Mass is more important than the priest who celebrates it.  Then one little girl said, well, I’d tell my mom if we don’t like the priests at St. Angela’s that we could always go to Saint Christopher’s!

Then I asked, what if the president made a law, that said it was against the law to go to Sunday Mass?  One girl said, he can’t do that, the Constitution said so.  I was impressed.  Then I said, what if the Constitution was changed, and the law of the land said it was illegal for Christians to gather for worship.  One boy said, “I’d go to Mass, even if it was against the law.”

And we then talked about how, in the first centuries of the Church it was illegal for Catholics to gather for Mass.  And so the Catholics would gather in people’s homes, and in they would gather in the Catacombs during the night so they wouldn’t get caught. 

Some Roman emperors decreed that Catholics caught going to Mass would be arrested and thrown to the lions in the Coliseum.  Some said that priests and Bishops would be arrested and put to death.

But we agreed as a class that going to Mass is so important that we would risk getting arrested or worse because practicing our faith is our first allegiance.

John Henry Newman had a prestigious and lucrative professorship at Oxford University.  During his professorship Professor Newman began to feel the call to convert to the Catholic Faith.  But because of Oxford’s religious affiliations, Professor Newman knew that he would lose his job if he converted.

When his friends tried to dissuade him from converting, they reminded him of the nearly $100,000 income he was giving up.

They were silenced when he answered: "What is $100,000 when compared to one Holy Communion?"

When we approach the Sacrament of Holy Communion, we are expressing our faith in Jesus and our desire for his continued friendship, that he be the King of every dimension of our life.

This is why the Church requires us to repent of and confess mortal sins such as missing Sunday Mass before receiving Holy Communion.  Because mortal sin is a rejection of Jesus’ Kingship of our life. 

One of the reasons many Protestants become Catholic is because of the Catholic mass.  At the Catholic 

Mass the most important thing is not the sermon, like it is in the Protestant service.  Catholicism doesn’t just offer words about Jesus, Catholicism offers Jesus.  He comes to us truly and really in the Eucharist. 

Our King doesn’t remain apart from us. He shows up even when the homily is boring and the music is mediocre.  Of course that doesn’t happen here at St. Angela’s. The Mass is that the Mass doesn’t just offer words about Jesus, Jesus truly becomes present, and feeds us with his body and blood.

We owe our loyalty to our king, and we show our loyalty, primarily by coming to Mass and celebrating the Eucharist as he commanded.

We come this weekend to the end of the liturgical year and the end of the Year of Faith.  Hopefully, this year, we have taken the opportunity to grow in our understanding of the faith, that we can better explain it to others. 

The Feast of Christ the King challenges us to examine where our loyalties lie.  Is my first loyalty to Christ and his Body the Church? 

If not, why not?  Our King’s love is so great for us. Pope Francis wrote that the Eucharist is the nourishment for the life of faith.  When we don’t come to Mass, we deny ourselves the nourishment Our Lord wishes to give us, to strengthen us in holiness.

We see so often, lukewarm mass attendance is linked to lukewarm faith.  But we aren’t meant to be lukewarm, our King desires hearts set on fire with love for him.

We renew our love and loyalty for our King today, our faith in his real presence in the Eucharist, and pray for the grace to make him the center of our life, that we may never be intimidated by any earthly power or seduced by worldliness, that we may not be discouraged by the weight of our earthly crosses, but become heralds of the victory of our King over sin and death for the glory of God and salvation of souls.