Christ the King 2024

Jesus Christ is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, who has made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father, to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.

Our Lord, the Righteous King, the Just Judge. The titles bestowed on Him by His own splendor and glory are inadequate, just as language itself is inadequate to express the depth and mystery of the Triune Deity. As Sacrament expresses in faint glimmers the presence and person of the God who became flesh, so His words and parables express glimmers of His personality and character. He revealed to us God as Father, and instructed us so to pray. He told us of the prodigal, and He uplifted the adulterous woman cast at His feet with gentle—yet piercing—mercy. He railed against the self-inflated hypocrisy of the Pharisees and drove greedy men from the Temple with a whip that He fashioned specifically for the purpose.

How do we reconcile these acts? Is He impetuous? Is He of divided mind? Is He given to flights of passion or wild emotion? These questions all seem reasonable on their face, particularly as we address the seeming bipolar moods of a lunatic. Any man who behaved in such a way may be thought such. The grounded mind, rooted in the firmness of the immovable world would certainly think so. The grounded mind, however, tends also to be the mind stifled, lacking imagination, devoid of the color of beauty and the music of love. To prevent our disenchantment, we must listen to our Lord not only with the reason of intellect, but with the ear of love—for how else do we grasp the depth of Love Himself?

There is almost no “letter” in the words of Jesus. Taken by a literalist, He will always prove the most illusive of teachers. Systems cannot keep up with that darting illumination. No net less wide than a man’s whole heart, nor less fine of mesh than love, will hold the sacred fish. -C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

The words of our Lord penetrate the firmness of the grounded world. He often responds not to the question He is asked, but to the heart which has asked it. His gaze pierces through the stony exterior and masks we wear to hide ourselves. He struck the pride of the Pharisees and the greed of the money changers just as much as He plucked the chord of the woman who had fallen to the sins of the flesh. We are told little of her, but His response tells us that her heart was not hard like the hypocrites—but soft and raw with the wounds of life that send someone to seek that sort of validation.

He is Just Judge not simply because He is perfect in all His righteousness, but because He is also perfect in His knowledge—knowing not only what we have done, but every dark corner of our hearts that bears witness to why we have done it. His justice is not the simple punishment of wrongdoing, but the supreme justice which seeks to put things right. His love is the love of the Father, who casts aside the sins of the son and runs to him for the joy that he has come home. As a Father admonishes, so does He, according to not only the weight of the sin, but the hardness of the heart.

Always remember that you are subject to this most gracious Sovereign, and never cease to come to Him with a suppliant heart. He will catch you with the most tender firmness, and lift the burdensome cross from your back to place it on His own.