Christ the King
Even though the kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ is loudly proclaimed in the Holy Scriptures and has ever been at the heart of our faith, in modern times it has come to be strongly contested. It was before this spectacle of a world that had officially revolted against the sovereign rule of Christ that Pope Pius XI decided to make a public act of homage to the Eternal Saviour by instituting this feast 100 years ago, during the holy year of 1925.
By the very fact of His being hypostatically united with the eternal Person of the Word, Jesus Christ obtains, at the first moment of His conception, complete and absolute power over all things. He is king of hearts, for no man has been or ever will be loved as Jesus Christ is loved by millions of hearts who owe to Him their total and complete allegiance, their eternal gratitude. He is king of minds, in that every human intellect has the duty to seek Him and His truth and cleave to it with all the strength of his being. He is king of wills, in that everyone must seek to obey His commandments and accomplish His sovereign will in their lives.
But Christ Our Lord is not only king of individuals. He is entitled not just to the devotion of each person taken singly. By the very fact that He has been established as Son of God through the hypostatic union, Christ is Lord and King of the world. That means He is king of each and every society, of each and every sovereign state, of each and every region, county, township and family. This is why Pius XI had a very specific goal in mind when he instituted this feast. It was not just to profess the Church’s faith concerning the eternal reign of Jesus; it was not only to remind people that at the end of time, He will come to judge and be acknowledged as King of the universe. Indeed, as he writes in the encyclical Quas Primas: “As long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Saviour, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ” (Pax Christi in Regno Christi). That is why it was first and foremost about proclaiming to the world the social kingship of Christ and the duties, not only of individuals, but also of nations towards Him.
Already Leo XIII had eloquently stated: “His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.” There is no difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society.
What this means is that Christ has an absolute right to be acknowledged as such by each individual, each state, each region, each township, each family. Such is the Catholic teaching on the kingship of Jesus Christ, and it is admirably expressed, in a condensed form, in the collect for this beautiful Mass, composed for the institution of the feast a century ago.
Almighty everlasting God, who in Thy beloved Son, King of the whole universe, has willed to restore all things anew; grant in Thy mercy that all the families of nations, rent asunder by the wound of sin, may be subjected to His most gentle rule.
Through Christ, God has willed to restore all things — Instaurare omnia in Christo, according to the expression of St Paul in the first chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, a text which became the motto of Pope St Pius X. To restore all things under one head, that is, Christ. That is why Christ came. He is the one head of the human race, the one Lord whom all must acknowledge and obey. If all do so, they find themselves in a society that is restored, that is brought together in unity and harmony. The oration then points out that it is due to the world’s failure to do precisely this that there is division. The nations are torn apart from each other and within themselves because they do not submit, as a whole, to the sovereignty of Christ.
Sin is what dislocates individuals. A person who is abandoned to sin lives a sort of spiritual schizophrenia, constantly drawn by nature and grace to the sweet rule of Christ, but always running away and seeking to break the bonds which unite her to her only hope of peace. Sin is what dislocates families. A family in which the members are living in sin runs the risk of becoming divided, for only the truth and virtue can unite. Sin is what dislocates nations. A nation in which the pursuit of virtue is not taken seriously, in which vice is not only left a free hand, but is sanctioned by law, is torn asunder, and even if it maintains for a time a certain cohesion, that superficial union will one day be dissolved, leaving it in a state of anarchy.
But when people actually do turn away from evil and do live good lives, they place themselves willingly in the Kingdom of Christ, whose yoke is sweet, and whose burden is light (cf. Mt 11:30), whereas the yoke of sin and of error is bitter, awful, corruptive, unsettling. As Our Lord said in the sermon on the Mount: No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (Mt 6:24). Either you hate Satan and you love Christ, or you bear the oppressive burden of Satan, and you scorn Christ. Satan is a cruel master, and those who turn to him will come to grief in this life before their eternal woe in the next. Satan lets on that by following him you can do what you want, whereas in reality you do what he wants, and what he wants is to destroy you by enticing you to follow the same path he followed, that of self-centredness, that dead-end road that leads to darkness, death and damnation.
Christ the King challenges us to come out of ourselves, to open up to the grace from on high, to all that is good and pure and holy, to the needs of our neighbour. His way is narrow, but only at the start, for if we persevere, the heart becomes enlarged and runs with delight in the way of the commandments. Whereas Satan and the world advertise an easy path, it is easy only at the start, for very quickly the heart becomes constricted and suffocates, unable to breathe the pure air of love, and is asphyxiated in its own tiny world.
Human beings are, by nature, weak and dependent; they rely on others. Either one serves Jesus Christ the King and finds in Him the true freedom of truth and virtue, or one serves oneself and the forces of evil, and finds oneself a slave. Only the truth sets free (cf. Jn 8:32).
At the beginning of the 20th century, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After him, Pope St Pius X prescribed an annual renewal of this consecration. Pius XI gave us the formula we will use at the end of this Mass, and to which is attached a plenary indulgence. As we make this consecration, let each of us renew the consecration of ourselves to the Sacred Heart of Our Sweet Saviour and give ourselves without reserve to working for the spread of His Kingdom on earth, allowing Him to reign first of all in our hearts and in our families, so that His reign may extend to the society we live in. Let us also turn on this day to the Queen of Heaven, Mary Immaculate, confident that the more we act in and through Her, the more effective we will be acting as disciples of her Son.
All for Jesus through Mary. Amen.