SOLEMNITY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, KING OF THE UNIVERSE
Today we
celebrate the Feast of Christ the King.
This has never been my favorite feast.
As a dedicated believer in self-government, a republican with a small
“r”, the whole idea of “King” is rather distasteful to me.
But beyond
that, we have the new, correct title of this Feast. In the liturgical books when I was ordained
back in the “good old days”, this Feast was known as “Christ the King.” Pretty simple. But about 10 years ago, when the revised
Roman Missal came out, the name was changed to the “Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, King of the Universe.” While a
bit clunkier, it is that last bit, “King of the Universe” that impresses me.
The Universe
is a very, very BIG, OLD, and STRANGE place.
Our best estimate now is that the universe is 13.772 billion years old, and it is at least 93 billion light
years in breadth. That is OLD. That is BIG. It is mentally strenuous to get our heads
wrapped around such a humongous concept.
And yet we claim, as part of our
faith, that the man Jesus who lived 2,000 years ago in Palestine, is
King and Lord, not just of Israel, not just of earth, not just of our solar
system, but of the whole bloomin Universe.
That is, self-evidently, outrageous.
And yet, that is clearly what St. Paul
proclaims to us in the second reading today.
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all
creation. For in him were created all
things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones
or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him
and for him.” That is quite a
sweeping vision!
But what does all that have to do with
us? What practical difference does it
make to the price of a cell phone, or a gallon of gas, or a Whataburger? How does that sweeping vision impact us?
I’ll come back to that in a minute,
but first I want to digress. Four years
ago I took a trip to Peru. While there I
visited an archeological site outside of Lima.
It was a pre-Inca site, I think it was the ancient Wari culture that was
gone before the Inca even showed up.
Definitely pre-Columbian, long before any idea of Christianity reached
that part of the world.
And these ancient people did a lot of
their construction using mud bricks, which were cheap and pretty well survived
the frequent earthquakes of the region.
We saw an area where they made the mud bricks, and in the pit where they
worked the mud by stomping on it was a very clearly preserved footprint of one
of the brick-makers. Here was a clearly
identified, unique, individual from centuries and centuries ago, who had lived
in that city and who made mud bricks. We
don’t know the individual’s name, but we do know their unique footprint. Here was a connection across centuries with a
unique, specific, person.
How is Jesus Christ the King of that
specific brick maker from long ago Peru?
Or the millions of other people in the Americas and Asia and Australia
and other places who never even heard of Jesus?
Or, to really get fantastic, to any intelligent, self-reflective
creatures who live on some planet in a galaxy millions of light years from
here?
How is all of this connected, and what
part do we play in it?
[I
am weird enough to wonder about stuff like this.]
We, through God’s
doing and not our own, know that Jesus is Lord, both of our lives
and of the entire universe. AND we have
a special role to play in the drama of salvation. It is the clear teaching of the Second
Vatican Council, in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium,
that the church – us – is the universal sacrament of salvation.
The UNIVERSAL sacrament of
salvation. We are a sacrament, that is,
a sign that effects what it signifies, of universal salvation; of salvation of
the universe! That’s a big deal.
How we lead our lives, how we treat
others, how we pray, how we worship, how we struggle to follow Jesus and live
like He did, not only affects ourselves, nor only our neighbors, but somehow,
spiritually, affects the salvation of the whole universe! //
How can that be? Well, it is time to turn to our Gospel. As we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord
Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, we don’t see Him depicted on a royal
throne, nor on the clouds of heaven, nor seated in glory at the right hand of
God, nor in any other way of power and prestige. Instead we see Him bruised, battered,
broken, dying miserably on the Cross. His
throne is an instrument of torture and execution. His lone subject is a condemned
criminal.
And yet this abject lowliness is the
salvation of the universe. It is the
destruction of the power of death. It is
faithfulness to the end that is the ultimate triumph of God over evil. It is the entrance to the Resurrection.
Truly, God’s ways are not our
ways. How you and I ever ended up being
a part of the universal sacrament of salvation is certainly way beyond me to be
able to figure out. But by God’s grace
that is in fact what we are. The
universal sacrament of salvation.
“He is before all things, and in
him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the
church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead,
that in all things he himself might be
preeminent.
For in him all the fullness was
pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile all
things for him,
making peace by the blood of his cross
through him,
whether those on earth or those in
heaven.”
Long
live the King!
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