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Live
Letters Solemnity of Our
Lord Jesus Christ the King |
The Catholic Telegraph
November 22, 2002The sovereign lordship of Christ is celebrated often during the course of the Church’s liturgical year. It is implicit in the feasts of Epiphany, of Easter, of Ascension. We also recall the ultimate triumph of Christ in every celebration of the Eucharist: "Lord Jesus, come in glory;" "Through Him, with Him, in Him ... all glory and honor is yours, almighty Father."
In addition to all that, however, there is the solemnity of Christ the King which we celebrate on the thirty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Pope Pius XI established the feast of Christ the King in 1925 to be celebrated on the last Sunday of October. He intended it to be an antidote to the increasing atheism and secularism of his time. In the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, the tonality of the feast became more cosmic and eschatological (i.e., concerned with the end of the world and the ultimate destiny of humankind) and its observance was moved to the last Sunday of the Church’s year. In its theme and in its place in the calendar, the feast of Christ the King has to do with finality - but also with futurity.
The live letter that the Church gives us for this feast is a heavy passage from chapter fifteen of First Corinthians. Some members of the young church of Corinth seem to have thought that the resurrection of the dead had already occurred, perhaps at the coming of the Holy Spirit, and that nothing more should be expected. Paul answers that, if they deny the resurrection of the dead, they must deny the resurrection of Jesus, too. But Jesus’ death and resurrection and ongoing life constitute the cornerstone of their faith, and, if there is no such thing as resurrection (for Christ and for us), our faith is meaningless.
This is where our passage begins. The fact of the matter is that Christ has risen from the dead and that His resurrection is just the beginning of what all the faithful will share. There is a parallel between Christ and Adam. Adam brought death for everybody and Christ brings life for everybody. It doesn’t all happen at once, of course. Christ’s resurrection constitutes the beginning. When He returns in glory at the end of time, all those who belong to Him will arise, too.
After that will come cosmic completion. Christ will have achieved dominion over all the hostile powers of sin. Finally (in the general resurrection) He will have triumphed over death itself, that most basic consequence of sin. Then Christ will offer "the kingdom" (i.e., a redeemed humanity, a redeemed creation) to His heavenly Father. At that point ("when everything is subjected to Him"), the humanity of Christ will be definitively subjected to the Father, so that all reality is now once more in obedient union with God.
Our passage is filled with references to Christ as King: "those who belong to Him;" "he hands over the kingdom to His God and Father;" "he must reign;" "everything is subjected to Him." In all these different ways Paul is teaching the Corinthians that Christ is still alive, that He is in charge of things now, and that the ultimate conclusion of everything will be the dominion of Christ which will be offered to the Father.
Most of us find the Corinthians’ difficulties with resurrection rather quaint. Theirs are not the concerns that we are busy with. Yet what Paul has to say to them is not without relevance to us. Paul’s teaching in this passage reminds us that we have a corporate future, that our human existence is not just a matter of living without reproach until our allotted days have run out and then gratefully taking the place that has been individually assigned to us in heaven. Paul invites all of us who are in Christ to look forward together to a final, universal, symphonic society in which the significance of the contributions of each of us will be manifested, in which each of us will be aware of how the lives of all of us had a part to play in the all-embracing love of Christ for His human brothers and sisters. We will all arise in new life, but that life will be one life, the life of Christ the King.
Our present task is not just to stay out of trouble until we are liberated from this world of sin. Our present task is to contribute to the formation of the kingdom, to extend the presence and action of Christ to the world around us so that every aspect of that world will fit into the final harmony that is constituted by the universal dominion of Christ.
Reflection on the kingship of Christ invites us to awareness that our present life is not a waiting room, a gathering place where we pass the time until we are called to go elsewhere. On the contrary, our present life is a work room where all of us together are invited to collaborate on a final future that will consist in the completion of redemption and the handing over of all creation to God.
As one year ends, we look forward to the beginning of another. But we also look forward to a time when there will be no more endings or beginnings because Christ the King will have brought everything to a final, unending present.
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Conversation Questions.
How do I experience the dominion of Christ in my life now?
How do I participate in the building up of Christ’s kingdom?
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