The readings for The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe may be found at:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112121.cfm
Next week, we start Advent.
It’s also 34 shopping days until Christmas, in case you were wondering.
But today, we celebrate the last Sunday in this Church Year B with the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.
Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925 with an encyclical,
a papal letter written in response to growing movements
trying to remove God from day to day life
and promote atheism in Mexico, Russia and parts of Europe
following World War I.
These were real threats,
not only to our world,
but to our Church and all its faithful.
As governments were taking more power away from the people,
they were simultaneously pushing God out of our daily lives.
But, to paraphrase the late Patrick Swayze in one of his movies, “Nobody puts Jesus in a corner.”
The feast of Christ The King was put in place to give Catholics hope, while the world was crumbling around them.
Christ the King cannot be pushed out. He is permanent. He is outside the bounds of time or any earthly control.
This feast reminds us that Jesus Christ is truth, not the independent fact checkers or social media or the news media or the heads of our political parties.
And while it’s been a hundred years since this feast was instituted,
there are more powers than ever, trying to divide us,
continuing to push Jesus Christ and his holy law out of public life
with the sole goal of separating us from one another
and separating us from the truth.
Now, we are not perfect.
The people around us are not perfect.
We’ve seen enough to know that The Church is not perfect.
Father is not perfect.
Well, maybe Father is pretty close to perfect…
but the point is that no matter what barriers,
excuses or choices we make,
none of us can prevent Christ
from carrying out his mission to testify to the truth.
The feast of Christ The King
reminds us that while governments come and go,
Christ is 100% King
beyond the reach of any earthly authority to take away.
Even in the face of suffering, Christ’s reign is undefeated,
because He and all who are conformed to him testify to the truth.
And what does that really mean?
It means that when our hearts are attuned to God,
we are on the right path.
It means that as good citizens of God’s kingdom,
we are doing things each and every day
to make the kingdom of God present in this world through our prayers and actions.
Jesus said in today’s gospel that “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
Belonging to the truth is to welcome all people with God’s love.
We act on this truth when we welcome strangers into our Church,
when we shelter the homeless on cold winter nights,
when we say grace out in public before eating our meal at a restaurant,
when we live out our Catholic beliefs publicly for all to see based on the truth,
not by what we are told is real by the powers of this world that exist to serve their own purposes.
We belong to the truth when we live our faith as part of who we are.
The truth is that God is a God of love and that God loves you and me.
The truth is that God loves us without hesitation, forgives us unconditionally and acts with overwhelming grace in our lives.
The truth is that Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
The truth is that we must live our lives in ways that testify to that truth, that testify to Jesus.
No matter how hard the world tries to convince us that Jesus is too good to be true.
The truth is not too good to be true.
The truth is the truth.
We are free to live in God’s love, grace, forgiveness and in the power of the resurrection.
We are free to love,
free to serve
and free to live in God’s kingdom -
because as we celebrate today,
Jesus is not only the truth,
He is Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe.
And the good news is you still have 34 day left until Christmas to make a good sacramental confession.
