| The Church chooses to make this, not December 31st, the last Sunday of the liturgical Year, and always reserves this day to celebrate the feast of Christ the King.
Church celebrating the feast of Christ the King at the very end of the Church year is not unlike a "poker-faced" card player sitting quietly at the end of the table with a Royal Flush. All year we see Christ as servant, teacher, liberator, healer: now the Church decides to "tip its hand": and proclaims at the very end that Christ is King.
The Church choosing this rather than the last Sunday of December as the last Sunday of the liturgical year also sends an interesting and provocative message to us: There is something inherent in our faith that invites us to step away from the established order of things.
Likewise, Christ is not a king like any other king, and his kingdom is unlike and far superior to any kingdom we have ever known. This should come as a relief for us Americans, since Royalty is distateful to fiercely democratic Americans.
The world imagines a king in royal garments, living in a fine palace, with jewels on his fingers and a crown of gold on his head.
Year A/B: Jesus, apprehended as a criminal and sitting before Pilate, was hardly a “kingly” figure. Nor was there much luxury to be found in the “wooden tower” of the cross.
Year C: In today’s Gospel, Jesus, hanging from the of the cross, was hardly a “kingly” figure. The irony comes in the inscription above his head staked to the “wooden tower” and the confession of one of the ultimate subjects of the realm, a common thief suffering capital punishment.
We have a King who reigns from the throne of a sickbed, a hospice, a hovel built on the side of a Third World dumps where he earns his living, a cardboad box beneath an overpass that warms and shelters him at night, the back units of a mental institution or the strapped bed of the profoundly developmentally delayed.
Year A: At the same time we need to open ourselves to the challenge of the day. In the Gospel Jesus divides people into the sheep, or those in the kingdom, and the goats, those outside of the kingdom. Then he explains the work and who he is as king.
The work needed from those who wish to belong to the kingdom is to care for the needy, the marginal, the oppressed. It is to reach out and minister to the King where he abides.
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