Posted on 25 November 2024

Sunday 24 November 2024
Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe – Year B

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1rd reading: Daniel 7,13-14
Psalm: 92 (93), 1abc, 1d-2, 5
2nd reading: Revelation 1,5-8
Gospel: John 18,33b-37

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Today's readings make us contemplate the royalty of Christ from a certain perspective, starting with this mysterious figure of the son of man in the Book of Daniel, which seems to be associated with the mystery of God; a passage from the Old Testament where we can find the first fruits of the mystery of the Holy Trinity and which announces to us a royalty which will not be destroyed. 

In the Apocalypse of St. John we also have a contemplation of Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, the prince of the kings of the earth, who has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to his God and FatherIt is indeed by the cross, by his death on the cross one day in time, that Jesus definitively accomplished our Salvation and established the Kingdom in his person, present in our world. 

Everything is definitely played out, but it is a question for each man and for all humanity to welcome this Salvation and to welcome this Kingdom. And to welcome the Kingdom of God is to welcome the royalty of Christ. 

Finally, in the Gospel, Jesus makes Pilate understand that his royalty is not of the same order as the royalty of the great men of the earth: "My royalty is not from here" ; but Jesus nevertheless reveals himself as king. 

Almost a century ago, at the end of the Holy Year 1925, Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King in his Encyclical Quas Primas, dated December 11. The Pope meditates on this kingship of Christ, not only a spiritual kingship that can be played out in the person of each Christian, but a kingship that must also transform our world and “leave its mark,” one might say, on our world. 

I will read you two short extracts from this encyclical:

If men would come to recognize the royal authority of Christ in their private and public lives, incredible blessings—just liberty, order and tranquility, concord and peace—would infallibly flow over the whole of society. […]

And a little further on he writes:

If princes and legitimately chosen rulers were persuaded that they command much less in their own name than in the name and place of the divine King, it is obvious that they would use their authority with all possible virtue and wisdom. In the elaboration and application of laws, what attention would they not give to the common good and to the human dignity of their subordinates! (No. 14)

We can think that Pope Pius XI was a gentle dreamer. We can also think that he was a prophetic man… In any case, for there to be rulers who love Christ and who seek to govern by drawing inspiration from the authority of Christ, the only solution is for Christians to engage in political life, not to then do like everyone else, but to continue to be Christians there. 

62 years after the encyclical of Pope Pius XI, a synod of bishops on the lay faithful of Christ took place in Rome. The holy Pope John Paul II then published a very beautiful apostolic exhortation, Christifideles laici, in number 42 of which we read this:

For a Christian animation of the temporal order, in the sense that we have said, which is that of serving the person and society, the lay faithful cannot absolutely renounce participation in "politics", that is to say, in the multifaceted action, economic, social, legislative, administrative, cultural, which has as its aim to promote, organically and through institutions, the common good. The Fathers of the Synod have affirmed this on several occasions: everyone has the right and the duty to participate in politics; this participation can take a great diversity and complementarity of forms, levels, tasks and responsibilities. The accusations of careerism, idolatry of power, selfishness and corruption, which are often launched against men of government, parliament, the ruling class, political parties, as well as the fairly widespread opinion that politics is necessarily a place of moral danger, all this does not justify in the least the skepticism or absenteeism of Christians for public affairs.

Conversely, the words of the Second Vatican Council are most significant: "The Church holds in high regard and esteems the activity of those who devote themselves to the good of the public good and assume its responsibilities for the service of all" (The joy and hope, 75). (n°42) In celebrating Christ the King of the Universe, the Church challenges each of us on the way in which we look at the life of our society and on the way in which we engage in it so that this Kingdom of God may grow in human society. When the Church speaks on social issues, she does not demand something in particular for Christians. She speaks for the good of all men, meditating on what God has revealed in Jesus Christ, and about him, and about man. Church, said the holy Pope Paul VI, is an expert in humanity (Populorum Progressio n°13). And when the Christian seeks to bring the Gospel into public life with intelligence, wisdom, prudence and audacity, it is the whole of society which finds itself better, which finds itself enhanced. 

We claim nothing for ourselves: we seek to bring from God the good of man which flows from salvation in Jesus Christ. 

For this, we must first be convinced that this kingship of Jesus is a good thing. For this, it is first of all a question of the Lord reigning in our lives and that our whole life seeks to respond to his love, seeks to respond to this kingship. 

Thérèse can help us with this. Those of you who are familiar with Thérèse's writings know the very special relationship she has with her father Louis, whom she calls "my darling King, my little King". And Louis, who has given nicknames to all his daughters, calls Thérèse "his little queen". And there is a great bond between them, especially since Thérèse is the youngest. 

What is interesting is to see how Thérèse experiences the relationship with her father: it is a relationship full of love and delicacy that is experienced in the Martin family. And Thérèse understood very early on that paternal love, as well as maternal love, was a place of peace, a place of consolation, a place of grace. In a letter from Zélie, her mother — so Thérèse is less than four and a half years old since Zélie died when Thérèse was four and a half years old — she says this about Thérèse:

She is a child who gets upset very easily. As soon as she has done something bad, everyone has to know about it. Yesterday, having accidentally knocked down a small corner of the wallpaper, she was in a pitiful state, then we had to tell her Father quickly; he arrived four hours later, we didn't think about it anymore, but she quickly came to tell Marie: "Tell Papa quickly that I tore the paper." She is there like a criminal awaiting his sentence, but she has in her little idea that she will be forgiven more easily if she accuses herself. (Ms A 5v)

Thérèse understood very early that the love of her beloved King is such that there is always mercy in his heart. Which is why at the end of her life in July 1887, in a letter to Abbé Bélière, she tells him this: I would like to try to make you understand by a very simple comparison how much Jesus loves even imperfect souls who confide in Him: I suppose that a father has two mischievous and disobedient children, and that coming to punish them he sees one of them trembling and moving away from him in terror, having however in the depths of his heart the feeling that he deserves to be punished; and that his brother, on the contrary, throws himself into the father's arms saying that he regrets having hurt him, that he loves him and that, to prove it, he will be wise from now on, then this child asks his father to punish him with a kiss, I do not believe that the heart of the happy father can resist the filial trust of his child whose sincerity and love he knows. He is not unaware, however, that more than once his son will fall into the same faults, but he is always willing to forgive him, if his son always takes him by the heart... I say nothing to you about the first child, my dear little brother, you must understand if his father can love him as much and treat him with the same indulgence as the other... 

Yes, Thérèse understood very early on — and she deepened it throughout her life — through parental love, that this kingship of Christ is a kingship of merciful love which means that there is nothing to fear from this King of kings and Lord of lords, as the Book of Revelation calls it (19,16:XNUMX); but that on the contrary it is a question of welcoming it generously so that it governs our lives and that by governing our lives, we ourselves, by engaging in our world we can allow this reign of Christ to progressively transform our poor world, so wounded by hatred, violence, sin. 

In another letter to her father, before she entered Carmel, Thérèse told him:

Yes, I will always remain your little queen and I will try to bring you glory by becoming a great saint. […]

And what model does she have for becoming a great saint? She ends this short letter by saying:

Daddy's little queen […] will try to do her best to look a little like her King.

On this feast of Christ the King, let us pray not only for all those who have the responsibility of governing nations, but let us also pray that in our families, this kingship of Christ may be experienced by each individual and by the entire family.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine