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Christ the King |
The Catholic Telegraph
November 23, 2001It’s always helpful to know where you’re going. When we start on a long journey, we need to know where we are going so that we will know what roads to take. As we come to the end of various stages on the journey, we keep reminding ourselves of our final goal. That way we reassure ourselves that we have been headed in the right direction and reorient ourselves, to the extent necessary, toward the goal we have been pursuing.
The kingdom of Christ is the goal toward which our life of faith is directed: the fullness of redemption, the final embrace of all believers into the life of the Holy Trinity, the conclusive validation of all the crosses and blessings that have made up our communal and individual life on this earth.
The Church’s liturgy calls us to orient ourselves toward the kingdom of Christ at two different yet overlapping points in the year. At the beginning of the Church’s year, on the first Sunday of Advent, the liturgy’s theme is the second coming of Christ. It’s important to know where we are going as we begin a new chapter in our life of faith. The end of the Church’s year - the thirty-fourth and last Sunday in Ordinary Time - calls us to renewed awareness of our goal with the solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the King. From beginning to end, from end to new beginning, Christian life is concerned with the Lordship of Christ. That’s what gives sense and meaning and direction to everything.
Our live letter for this Sunday is from the beginning of the letter to the Colossians. (We already saw most of this reading earlier in the year as we began our semi-continuous reading of Colossians.) This is a passage of praise for the lordship of Christ.
Paul begins by reminding us why we should be grateful to the Father: because He has made us inheritors of heaven and, in forgiving our sins, has delivered us from submission to evil. God has done this by making us participants in the kingdom of His Son. The passage goes on to explain the kingship of the Son (Christ Jesus).
Christ is the master of creation because, as full image of the Father, He is the pattern according to which everything of every sort has been created. He precedes everything and keeps everything in being.
Christ is the master of re-creation, too, the source of a new kind of life that reflects Him and that brings everything that had been fragmented by sin into oneness in Himself. Through His offering of Himself on the cross, Christ brought everything in heaven and everything on earth into a final and permanent unity with Himself.
In this profound and radiant passage Paul tells us that Christ is the beginning and the end of everything. Everything good that has ever been has its origin in Him. Everything good that is still to come will be a participation in His life. From beginning to end, the Son is in charge. Christ is king. Christ is the kingdom.
This passage teaches us about time, an appropriate lesson for the ending of the year. Christ is the source of our present worth. Everything good in us is somehow derived from Him. Talents, achievements, associations with other people, spiritual gifts that come to us through Scripture and the sacraments: they are all gifts of Christ. We are now, at this present time, creatures of value and dignity, sharing the very worth of God’s Son. Christ makes our present precious.
But we are not yet complete. We are still able to sin, still capable of undoing what Christ has done. We are still capable of growth, too, capable of deepening our life in the Lord, of intensifying our relationship with Him, of strengthening our participation in the life of others who share His life. Still to come is final reconciliation, final fullness, final peace. We have a future as well as a present, and that future is Christ.
Present and future, already but not yet: those are the contexts in which our Christian life unfolds, the settings in which the kingdom of God develops. It’s already here, but it’s still to come. But both in present and in future, the kingdom is nothing other than Christ Himself. The kingdom is not a project that Christ works on, as if it were something distinct from Himself. He is the kingdom and we participate in the kingdom to the extent that we are in Him.
Today’s year-end celebration reminds us that all creation images Christ now, and that all creation, flawed and damaged by sin as it is, is nonetheless directed toward future fullness in Christ. Every value that is, every goodness that will ever be is rooted in the life of Christ.
Years end and years begin. We have all come a long way on our journey. We still have a long way to go. Today’s feast reminds us that, wherever we may be on our journey, both our present and our future find their worth and meaning only in Christ the king.
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Conversation Questions.
How is Christ the center of my life?
Is my life more present or more future oriented?
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