Exactly 100 years ago, when he established it, Pope Pius XI <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_11121925_quas-primas.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hoped</a> the feast of Christ the King would give new meaning to the Church year. He was right, and it does.
One hundred years ago when he established it, Pope Pius XI hoped the feast of Christ the King would give new meaning to the Church year.
Looking backward, it would be “the crowning glory upon the mysteries of the life of Christ already commemorated during the year.” Looking forward, it would give lay people, “much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal.”
He was right. Christ the King is the key that gives meaning to the whole Church year.
Advent is about preparing to meet the King.
If you think of Advent as the necessary preparations for a visit from the King of the Universe, the whole season starts to make a new kind of sense.
One Advent Gospel tells us to be ready, for “you do not know what day the Lord will come.” In other words: Be ready for our Lord the King, by being sure we are doing the kinds of things he wants.
Another Advent Gospel quotes John the Baptist insisting: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”
Rural roads were fixed to make them easily passable when royals were visiting — including filling in low places and cutting back hills. This is what we need to do in our spiritual lives for our King, and it isn’t easy or automatic.
Christ the King reveals the meaning of Christmas.
Once you see that the birth of Jesus is the birth of a powerful ruler coming to re-establish true peace over earth, everything makes more sense.
Of course he is born in poverty, outside the existing powers of our earth that we have learned not to trust, and of course an army of angels announces him. Important foreign visitors prostrate themselves before him, and a worldly king wants him eliminated … just as you would expect.
And of course we should celebrate the day extravagantly, with lights and loud singing. The king has come!
Christ the King gives us our marching orders for Ordinary Time.
When Jesus uses parables to describe the Kingdom, the meaning is rich and deep, but also obvious. He uses everyday occurrences in his parables — yeast in bread, farmers sowing seeds, and family vineyards — to say that the kingdom usually looks like our everyday lives.
In fact, a shortcut way to understand the kingdom is this: Kingdom virtues are family virtues. The Kingdom of Christ is very simply a place where we welcome strangers as family members. We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant and pray for the living and the dead — treating everyone like family.
Lent is a time to change our allegiance from one king to another.
Lent starts with the Three Temptations, as Satan offers his kingdoms of wealth, pleasure and power, and Jesus rejects them.
Instead, we join him in the effort desert, giving away wealth in almsgiving, pleasure in fasting, and surrendering to God in prayer. Lent comes to an end in Holy Week, where Jesus welcomes the Good Thief into his Kingdom from the cross.
Easter began the march of the Kingdom across nations.
Jesus told us that the only sign he would give was the sign of Jonah, who, after giving his life for others, spent three days in the land of the dead, then heard the Lord say “Arise!” and proceeded to convert the town of Nineveh in no time.
The same thing happened with Jesus Christ. After three days in the land of the dead, he rose and proceeded to convert the world in no time, as demonstrated in such works as The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries by Rodney Stark, Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World by Larry Hurtado, and Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by popular historian Tom Holland.
Today, evangelists following in the footsteps of the first Christians are transforming cultures still.
There are more touch-points with Christ the King all year long.
There are, of course, the feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our Queen Mother, and the other saints. And what do they teach us? They demonstrate how faithful friends of Christ the King accomplish in their neighborhoods the things he would do if he were here.
Let’s join them, all year long.
