Getting Back to Christ
| The Solemnity of Christ the King, which every Catholic throughout the entire world is celebrating today, is a new thing. The Church has existed for almost 2000 years, but this Solemnity is less than 100 years old. It was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925. |
He explained his reasons for doing so in an encyclical letter called "Quas primas". First, he explained that throughout history liturgical feasts have been instituted in response to particular needs that arise in the life of the world and the Church (#22).
He gives the example of the feasts in honour of the martyrs, of the celebration of Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart. And then he explains which need this new celebration addresses.
He was writing this encyclical in 1925, when the world was still trying to recover from World War I, which had devastated Europe and shattered modernity's hopes for unlimited progress based solely on human reason.1925 was also only a few years after the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, which had given birth to the world's first explicitly atheist totalitarian regime: Soviet communism. Everywhere the pope looked, he saw human societies abandoning Christian values and trying to build paradise on earth through other means.
But if humanity had been able to perfect itself by itself, without God's help, then Jesus Christ would never have come to earth. The fact is, Jesus did come. He brought his Gospel and his grace to a fallen race, and only by believing in that Gospel and accepting that grace can individuals and societies achieve true and lasting peace and prosperity.
Pope Pius XI instituted today's Solemnity as a way to remind the world that to reject Christ, either in private life or in public life, is to reject our only hope, and to accept him is to accept salvation.
Christianity Is not the Enemy
Many critics of the Church blame Christianity for the evils of the modern world: war, racism, sexism... But the truth is just the contrary. The only culture in which those things are recognized as evils is precisely the culture that was formed by Christianity - western culture.
Only through Christianity did the human family gradually come to realize that all people share the same human dignity and have the same basic human rights. Only through Christianity, for example, was slavery recognized as an injustice and gradually eliminated - in fact, in non-Christian cultures even today slavery persists.
We must not believe the lie that popular culture wants us to believe that all religions are the same, and our faith in Christ should not overflow into the laws and customs of our communities. That is the lie that today's Feast was established to expose. If we exclude Christ and Christian values from public life, we will only give more room for anti-Christian values to flourish.
As Pope Pius XI wrote in 1925, reflecting on the recent world crises of the time:
- The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied.
- Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the state and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers. Some men went even further, and wished to set up in the place of God's religion a natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart.
- There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God.
- "The rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences." (Quas primas, #24)
Renew Our Loyalty to Christ the King
By giving us this liturgical celebration, the Church hopes that we will not forget about our King and his Kingdom. The Church is a wise mother. She knows that we have a built-in tendency to forget about these things.
The pleasures, possibilities, and worries of life in this fallen world are real. They are strong magnets that try to monopolize our attention. But Christ is stronger. And he has much more to offer - eternal life, in fact, meaning, purpose, forgiveness, wisdom, and the strength of his grace. And yet, he is not a tyrant. He offers us citizenship in his Kingdom, but he leaves us free to accept or reject that offer.
Today, let's renew our acceptance. When he proves his love for us once again in the sacrifice of this Mass, let's profess our love for him. Let's invite him into our minds, and let him reign there through our firm belief in all of his teaching.
Let's invite him into our wills, that part of us where we make our decisions, and let him reign there through our loving obedience to his commandments - especially the commandment to love our neighbours as he has loved us.
Let's invite him into our hearts, that secret centre of our souls where we treasure things, where our affections reside, and let him reign there by putting every natural desire in second place, behind our desire to know, love, and follow our King.
Today especially, before we receive our Lord in Holy Communion, let us put more meaning than usual into the words that sum up every Christian's fundamental mission and deepest desire: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.