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 seasons and feasts point to this reality: that Jesus Christ is the King of the Universe, the Lord of all. All of time, all of history, is heading toward this climax when Christ will be revealed as the universal King of Kings.
Although this feast wasn’t officially on the Church calendar until 1929, it’s been a doctrine of the Church since the very beginning—Christ is the “King of Kings and Lord of Lords”, as Handel’s Messiah proclaims.
For a little cultivation of mind and soul, recently I read Shakespeare’s Henry V. There is the poignant scene in Act IV when the night before the major battle, King Henry disguises himself as a commoner. The king dressed in peasant garb visits his soldiers, walks among them, calls them brothers, in order to raise their spirits for the upcoming battle.
Sound familiar? The King of the Universe became one of us. And it wasn’t just an act, God really became man, and sent the Church on a campaign to bring the Gospel to all of the corners of the earth. We refer to the Church on earth, as the Church militant—campaigning through time against the forces of evil, to spread the good news of Christ’s eternal kingdom of peace.
Another famous story about royalty disguising itself as the commoner is the story of the Prince and the Pauper. The prince and a poor commoner trade places, the prince goes and lives in the streets, begging for food, and the pauper lives in the castle and is treated like royalty. While he is on the streets, some treat the prince with kindness, some ignore him, even spit on him. At the end of the story, the prince comes back to the castle, sits on his throne and rewards those who cared for him, loved him, helped him, when they did not know he was the prince.
That lesson should sound familiar as well. It sounds like Matthew’s Gospel this weekend! In Matthew’s 25th chapter, as he his passion and crucifixion grew closer and closer, Jesus says that the son of man will come back and sit on the throne and make a judgment. He will separate all of humanity—every human that has ever lived into two camps, the camp of the sheep and the camp of the goats.
And then he listed the critiera upon which he would base this judgement? The king has very specific criteria, which he makes known to us.
The sheep are those who, throughout their lives performed the works of mercy. When we were young we learn about the corporal and spiritual works of mercy: feed the hungry, cloth the naked, giving drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, nurse the sick, visit the imprisoned.
Jesus says, that when we personally care for the poor, we care for him.
St. Martin of Tours lived in the 4th century. He was a soldier, but also a Christian. And one very cold day, much like today, he came across a poor, nearly naked man, lying at a city gate, begging for help. Martin had no money. So the story goes that he took his red soldier’s cape, and cut it in half, and gave it to the poor man, to keep warm.
That night, St. Martin had a dream. He saw Jesus Christ in the heavens, seated on his throne, wearing half of his red soldier’s cape. An angel asked Christ, why are you wearing that cape, wear did you get it from? And Christ responds, “My brother Martin gave that to me.” When we care for the poor, we care for Christ.
Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta said, “at the end of life, we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done, we will be judged by, ‘I was naked and you clothed me, I was hungry and you fed me.” But then she broadens the concept, “hungry not only for bread, but hungry for love; naked, not only of clothing, but of human dignity and respect, homeless not only of a room of bricks, but also homeless because of rejection…this is Christ in distressing disguise.”
The catechism validates Mother Theresa’s words, when it says, “On Judgment Day at the end of the world, Christ will come in glory to achieve the definitive triumph of good over evil…when he comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, the glorious Christ will reveal the secret disposition of hearts and will render to each man according to his works and according to his acceptance or refusal of grace.”
There is a great difference between being nice and being holy. Being nice means not ruffling other people's feathers; being nice, is merely surface deep. Being holy means going out of our way to do what is morally right, and to serve others in need; it goes deep and always involves self-sacrifice, going the extra mile.
Someone can be nice and still be completely self-centered - using niceness to gain popularity. But again to quote the catechism, we will be judged according to the “secret disposition of our hearts”. Jesus calls us not just to be nice on the surface, but to be holy from the inside out. To do good for others not in order to be rewarded for it, or noticed for it, but because they are truly in need.
We will be judged on how we acted in our everyday lives. We can show that we are on the side of Christ by looking for opportunities to serve him: by making friends with the new kid at school, defending the colleague who always gets bullied, supporting an unwed mother, adopting an orphan, staying late at work to help a coworker who is behind in his project, bringing fresh flowers to a relative confined to a hospital bed, inviting a lonely neighbor over for tea and cake.
Our everyday encounters carry, as St. Paul says, an “eternal weight of glory”. Because we perform acts of kindness for Christ, they take on eternal proportions, they reverberate forever. Through acts of kindness, we can grow in holiness.
The Feast of Christ the king challenges us once again to truly put Christ at the center of our lives: to allow him to reign in every aspect of our life: our political life, our social life, our leisure time, our family, our friends, our parish, our attitudes, our behaviors, our thoughts, to put all under the dominion of Christ, to subject ourselves to his rule, to ready our souls for judgment by serving Christ in the poor, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
No comments:
Post a Comment