This Sunday, the Solemnity of Christ the King, closes our Church year. Next week is the first Sunday of Advent and the start of a new Church year. This feast of Christ the King originated in 1925. Because it was celebrated at the end of October, that month became known as the month of Christ the King. As the age of dictators was beginning, the Pope at that time, Pope Pius XI, wanted to remind the Church that, with all the groups seeking loyalty in our life, our ultimate allegiance should be to Jesus Christ.
Today, over 90 years later, all the dictators whose power seemed so huge and permanent back then, who dominated the world scene as the Soviet Union, the Japanese Empire, Fascist Italy and later the Third Reich are now all gone and Jesus Christ remains. And ninety years from now, the power brokers of our time will be gone and Jesus Christ will remain.
Yet, ironically, on this feast of Christ the King, the Gospel reading shows Jesus at what seems to be his weakest and loneliest, the moment of His Crucifixion on the Cross. But here, Jesus is not at His weakest but really at His strongest. He is not at His loneliest but at His most generous.
Jesus seems to be at His weakest here on the cross but is really at His strongest because here, on the Cross of Calvary, Jesus does what no one else on earth can do. He forgives a man's life of sin and gives him eternal life and entry into the Kingdom.
Furthermore, here on the Cross, Jesus is atoning for the sins not of a particular group but of the world, the sins of all time and places, the sins of His time and the sins of our time. Here, on the Cross, Jesus is absorbing, almost like a huge blotter, the sins of the entire human race. Here, at this moment on Calvary, all by Himself with nobody else's help, Jesus is unilaterally restoring the life of grace to human history.
What looks like a moment of weakness, then, is really a moment of enormous, supernatural power as, on Calvary, a cosmic lock springs open, a wall is broken down and heaven is again "open for business."
The Kingdom of Christ on earth is not a place on a map, that we an locate through global positioning system from a satellite. It is a condition of soul. The Kingdom of Christ on earth does not belong to any particular era, it spans all times and centuries.
On this feast of Christ the King, we look to the Cross: what many saw as a place of weakness became a tower of strength; what looked like a place of loneliness continually gives life to the world.
To be at the Cross, to be at the Mass, is to be at the headquarters of the Kingdom of Christ on earth, the center from which Jesus Christ changes lives and our world, because the sacrificial bread and wine of the Mass, the body and blood of Christ, contain all the power of Christ's Death and Resurrection.
Christ is King not only because He reigns from above but because He reigns within our life. In this coming Church year, we can resolve to keep a crucifix in our home so we can reflect on it, meditate on it, and consult it. St. John Vianney called it the "deepest book we will ever read."
Place Christ at the center of all you do, venerate Him as King of your life. With Christ as center of our life, we have grace and hope for ourselves and others.
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