Sermon for the Feast of Christ the King

Yes, hail to Thee, O Christ, our King! Put to flight Lucifer, the fallen angel of darkness, from our homes, schools and society ... whilst we, Thy friends, continue to salute Thee« Hail, Christ, our King!

From Rorate Cæli

By Fr Richard Cipolla

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”(John 18:38)

I dreamed the other night I was dying.  The priest came, and the only question I asked him as he was anointing me was this: “How will I recognize him?  How will I know it is He?  The priest whispered in my year: “The one with the crown, that’s how you will know whom to go to.”  Of course!  The crown, the one with the crown, that’s how I will know whom to go to! Of course, the crown, the King, the King of heaven! That’s how I will be able to tell, and in this situation, it is crucial to recognize the King, for to get into heaven you have to know the King. And so I died, and I found myself looking into the eyes of a stranger, yet someone I vaguely knew, but still a stranger, and someone not wearing a crown.  But he had his hands outstretched to me, waiting for me to approach. But there was no crown, so this was a trick, so I went on looking. And then I saw someone in the distance. As I walked toward him, he walked toward me. I began to run now, for I could see a crown on his head. This was it, the key to heaven, the end of the game. I had won! And before I could stop myself, I ran into the mirror, the mirror shattered, and I was alone in the darkness, where I heard bitter lamentations all around me.

There are so many ways to avoid Pilate’s question: “So then are you a king?” The most obvious way is to treat the whole matter of this feast and the kingship of Christ as one more church image, a somewhat remote but pleasant image, for who does not like talking about kings and queens, especially if they are not real but in fairy tales. But we come here on this feast of Christ the King to listen to Jesus’ answer to Pilate and then to decide whether this answer is true, and then to decide what has this to do with me. Pilate’s first question: “Are you the king of the Jews?  Jesus answers this question to lay the foundation for the debate and to get rid of the trivial question at hand:  are we talking about the charge the Jews trumped up that I am some sort of Messianic pretender who is a danger to the Roman empire?  Pilate lashes back at Jesus:  “I am no Jew. Your own people have charged you and handed you to me. What have you done?” Jesus reply is negative. He tells Pilate what his kingship is not. He is not a king in any political sense, not in the worldly sense.  This does not mean that his kingship has nothing to do with this world, that it is some sort of pie-in-the-sky kingship, some sort of make-believe over -the-rainbow kingship. The world that Jesus faced and is talking about is the world he knew and the world we still know: the word as human society organized on the basis of unbelief in God, organized on the basis of belief only in the power and rights of the individual, organized on the basis of the words of Lucifer:  non serviam. I will not serve. It is this world that stands firmly opposed to the kingship of Christ, a kingship whose power is mocked by the bearers of the power of this world, the power of money, the power of politics, the power of the self-styled intelligentsia, the power of the unbridled ego of a selfish society.  As so Pilate questions Jesus further: “So, then, you are a king”. And finally the answer, the answer to why we are here on this feast: “The reason why I was born, the reason why I came into the world, is to testify to the truth, Anyone committed to the truth hears my voice

There is the basis, the heart of Jesus’ kingship. He is king in terms of witness to the truth, the truth about Pilate, the truth about the world, the truth about us.  Therefore, the kingship of Christ is first about judgment, for a confrontation with truth always requires decision, a decision about what is true and a decision to accept that truth and act upon it. To call Christ the King is to put oneself on trial, for the kingship of Christ, if taken seriously, cannot but fail to force us to ask ourselves what is truth for us, what is most genuine, what is most real for us, so that we see all things through this reality, through this truth. Those who would use Jesus as some sort of revolutionary hero whose followers are to usher in a wonderful age of peace and justice are firmly on the side of Pilate in their willful refusal to let themselves be confronted with the judgement that lies at the very heart of Jesus’ presence as the truth.  But this is true also of those who believe that with enough good will and elbow grease that poverty, crime, war and holocausts can be wiped out by appeal to the common good. For here too, Jesus’ kingship cuts through this romantic gauze that covers up the real condition of the world, a world that is in the condition it is in because of the radical nature of the sinfulness that pervades human society.

The question for us to answer today is this:  which side do I stand on in this confrontation with the truth?  We who come here presumably accept, at in religious theory, that Christ is King. But do we accept what this means in our lives, in how we live our lives, do we let the kingship of Christ illumine those dark recesses of our lives, those parts of us we keep shut up because that is where the spare crown is kept that we place on our own head when we want to?  Do we like Pilate evade the living presence of the answer to the question “What is truth?” and live our lives making half-hearted compromises with what we know to be empty lies, looking away from the face of the one who is truth, because he is love.  Ah, the first time we hear that word, but it is inevitable, for truth is grounded in love, even that truth about ourselves that is so painful to bear, for it was borne fully on the Cross by the love of God in the flesh. Christ’s witness to the truth before Pilate is a witness to love, what love looks like: Ecce homo!  Behold the man! And to avert our eyes to truth as Pilate did is to refuse to look upon love, to refuse to be loved even to death, to be loved to life.

What does Christ the King ask of us today at this celebration of the Holy Sacrifice that makes present his saving death for us? He asks us to give him what alone will make his kingship real for us, real in that deep and personal way, the way that will transform our lives and enable our lives to be for others as witnesses to the truth. And we must give him this when we come to the altar to receive Him, as He comes to us with his Sacred Heart burning with love for us.

What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.

If I were a wise man, I would do my part.

But what I can I give him, give him my heart.