The idea of Christ as king doesn’t sit well with people formed in Western democracies that regard kings, queens and princes as people unduly privileged. We detest such privileges counting them at odds with modern age’s radical equality so sacrosanct that it has become a winning formula for any argument in the public square. For example, equal rights have to include: marriage equality, gender equality, bathroom equality, job equality, housing equality—down to the wire. Part of the effort to design radical equality involves the resolve to debunk history’s great personalities, find their faults, judge them evil, and tear down monuments erected to their honor. Observe that currently, so-called leaders of thought make mockery of leadership; and like owls, awake at night, they search out the pitfalls of leaders; and should they find none, they make up—through the connivance of the media—some faults which become center-points of late-night shows and amusement. And this is what living in a free society has become.
Do you see why the feast of Christ the King doesn’t square well with modern mentality? Or maybe it does. Few years ago, an atheistic author made up stories about Jesus having a wife through whom He raised kids who formed the line of kings in France. Many were thrilled by the craziness, notwithstanding that the charade of a novel, The Da Vinci Code, was clearly tagged a fictional tale. It tells you the extent to which people crave absurd myths, legends and lies about Christ and how easily seeds of doubt about the Christian faith and the core truth about Christ are sown and swallowed by the gullible. Christ remains a sign of contradiction, as Simeon prophesied. Even those who hated him, like Herod, craved to see and hear him. Many who don’t believe in Him are still fascinated about His person and would crave to blurt out something about Him. If that is not dominion, tell me what else is. Christ truly rules the hearts and minds of both those who know Him as king and those who pretend they have another.
Christ’s kingship is celebrated this Sunday, the last of the 52 Sundays that make up the Church’s liturgical year, and the 34th Sunday of the Ordinary time season. The Church’s division of her liturgical year into three cycles A, B, C is probably the most biblical piece of the Church’s life, coming directly from the three synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke, each representing cycles A, B, C, respectively. Though you may have been told by your Evangelical friends that Catholics don’t read the bible, the truth is that you actually do read or listen a lot to the bible, especially if you attend Mass every Sunday. Today, we concluded our reading of the gospel of Matthew—not chronologically but liturgically. This means that our reading of Matthew was more a lived experience than a reading experience; if you like, we lived Matthew more than we read him.
Today’s gospel speaks to us about the Final Judgment, putting before our focus the Four Last Things—Death, Judgment, Heaven or Hell, among which three will be our lot. The parable of the Sheep and the Goats reveals the central issues on which judgment would be based. After all is said and done, we shall be judged based on our commitment to charitable acts—what the Church refers to as the Corporal Works of Mercy. The parable has Jesus telling us that He disguises Himself as the poor, the stranger, the homeless, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner in His everyday encounter with us. Every charitable overture—or lack of it—we make or refuse to make toward the weak is an encounter with Him. The sacred playground for divine encounter is the arena of the poor. Pope Francis’ entire pontificate has been a reminder to all Christians of this shocking truth. How well are you responding to this demand of your Lord and King?
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo