The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe-Cycle C

My Dear Friends in Christ,

Division is an illness that has plagued human society nearly from the beginning. One need not make it more than three chapters into Sacred Scripture to find evidence of this disease on full display. In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve disobey the simple command not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God comes looking for the human couple and calls out to Adam, “Where are you?” (Gn. 3:9). At first glance, the question may seem silly. Is God not omniscient and omnipresent? How could He possibly not know where Adam and Eve are? Of course, God knows all things, and is present in all places at all times, and therefore, He knows exactly where Adam and Eve are. He knows not only that they are hiding from Him as Adam confesses in the following verse (Gn. 3:10), and therefore knows their physical location, but much more importantly, God knows that after the Fall, their spiritual location has radically changed. Then why ask the question? God asks where Adam is for Adam. Here at the beginning of human history, God is asking a version of the same question that Andrew, the brother of Peter, will ask Jesus, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” (John 1:38). Again, the question is not simply “where are you going,” or “where will you be spending the night?” Rather, it is more along the lines of “where do you abide,” or “what is at the center of your life and gives it meaning?” When God asks Adam this question, He already knows that He is no longer at the center of Adam’s life personally, or at the center of the life Adam shares with Eve. Something else, or someone else has displaced him. More on this in due course.

Adam does not really understand the question completely, thinking God is asking where he is physically. Such misunderstanding is a mistake which before his Fall, Adam, blessed with perfect science or knowledge, would have never made. Yet, when God asks the question, He knows that Adam’s response will in part reveal the answer to the deeper question God is asking Adam to Adam himself. God is, if you want, putting the Socratic method to work. Adam responds, “I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Gn. 3:10). God then asks another question, “Who told you that you were naked?” And then immediately another, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gn. 3:11). Notice that, far from a mere philosophical inquiry, by asking leading questions God is providing Adam with an opportunity. “Did you disobey me, Adam?” Adam never says yes, never expresses remorse, never apologizes. Far from it. Instead, responding in the affirmative, Adam, blames not himself, but rather points the finger indirectly at Eve and directly at God Himself. Adam says “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate” (Gn. 3:12, my emphasis). In a prefiguration of Calvary, Adam plays the man who appears in today’s Gospel from Luke and is popularly known as the “bad thief” and traditionally known by the name Gestus.

Gestus is facing the same difficult situation as Adam was did in the garden of Eden. God had said to Adam that “in the day that you eat of [the tree of knowledge of good and evil] you shall die” (Gn. 2:17). Faced with the possibility of his own mortality, as we have seen Adam blames God, and so does the son of Adam hanging next to Christ on Calvary. Gestus says to Jesus, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” (Lk. 23:39). From mere shifting of blame, the human family has now fallen so far that now not only do we blame God for our own faults, for its own failures, but we deride and slander Him when He respects the integrity of human freedom. I cannot tell you how many times in discussing the topic of sin with my students that God ends up in the dock. ‘If God was truly loving He would not allow for sin to happen,’ comes the accusation. And when the response is given that without freedom no loving relationship could obtain between Creator and creature, students often question the good of free will, not seeing the beauty of even the possibility of living in authentically loving communion with God. Here, Gestus falls prey to the same trap, echoing Adam. ‘Undo what you have done by giving me free will, God!’

An abuse of freedom will always come with maltreatment of others, up to and including God Himself, for a perversion of freedom is a perversion of love. Where there is sin, therefore, there will always be division. This is why the first sinner goes by the name “devil,” a noun derived from the Greek diaballein meaning “to attack,” “to slander,” or, “to throw across.” This is what the diabolical spirit does, it throws us across one another, setting us at odds. Primarily, diabolical activity is opposed to God, attempting to divide the human family from its source of life and happiness. Yet, being estranged from God has a ripple effect that disrupts everything in its path, throwing every relationship we have upside down. This is what we see in Genesis 3. Sin imports division between God and the human family, between members of the human family (as Adam blames Eve), and between the human family and the rest of creation, seen in the fact that Eve blames the serpent and in the punishment Adam receives of difficulty in tilling the ground (see Gn. 3:13 & 17-19).

While this sorry state of affairs is nothing new, the rapidity and ease with which we condemn one another through social media is, and this is something to be lamented. A tool which could, serve as a means to bring us together in constructive dialogue is far too often used as a means for division. Today, it is a feat if we can make it through a few hours of our day without being witness or party to a public discourse which has as its aim nothing except tearing down our neighbor. Most deplorably this is readily found in countless so-called Catholic blogs and podcasts. Take a look around and you will quickly find many who slander the Pope, who is the symbol of our unity as a Church, and who deride those who worship God in a way that does not conform to their own. Most often the two are intertwined. Apparently, the incoherence of such positions does not dawn on these individuals. We pray for increased unity of the Church in communion with the Pope and our local Bishop at Mass!

Be pleased to grant [your holy catholic Church] peace, to guard, unite and govern her throughout the whole world, together with your servant Francis our Pope and N. our Bishop, and all those who, holding on to the truth, hand on the catholic and apostolic faith (Eucharistic Prayer 1 (The Roman Canon), St. Paul Daily Missal 847).

 Why? Because the Eucharist makes and unifies the Church into one Body which the descendants of the Apostles in communion with Peter have been entrusted to “guard, unite and govern” on God’s behalf. Do we really expect to be serving God by fostering division within the Body of His Son, the Church? Such activity is not the work of Christ, it is the work of the enemy and all who carry out the same activity and undermines the Church’s ability to be the Sacrament of Salvation in the world (See John 17:20-21, cf. Lumen Gentium, 1). What do we gain by this? What victory is there in discord? Why do we find it so difficult to listen to one another and to love one another?

The reason that we pursue this path leading to nowhere is that we have forgotten why we are here, we do not even ask ourselves the question anymore, much less where it is that we are going. Instead of taking the time to realize that by our nature we have one common goal, unity with God through, with and in Jesus Christ, we look to the self to see what is most agreeable at any given moment. We have become what St. Augustine famously called “self-pleasers.” He meant by this that we have become self-referential, self-obsessed, and therefore inclined to make every decision based on self-interest. This is the practical manifestation. But the practical stems from a metaphysical illness, an illness best described as seeing oneself as the center and source of one’s own life. In the City of God, Augustine puts it this way:

Thus, to abandon God and to exist in oneself—that is, to be pleased with oneself—does not mean that one immediately loses all being but rather that one veers towards nothingness. That is why, according to Holy Scripture, the proud are also given another name and are called self-pleasers (2 Pt 2:10)” (14.13).

When we are self-pleasing, the result is not a pleasant life, it is one of chaos and division. And this not only on an individual level, but a societal level. Which is why in the same work, Augustine writes that no city, no country, no community of any kind will have peace apart from the right worship of God.

Rome never was a republic, because true justice had never a place in it…But the fact is, true justice has no existence save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ, if at least any choose to call this a republic…we may at all events say that in this city is true justice; the city of which Holy Scripture says, ‘Glorious things are said of thee, O city of God’” (City of God, 2.21).

Only when the human family unites in right worship will divisions between ourselves and God and amongst one another cease. This is the future we sing of in today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps. 122) and the future Isaiah prophecies: “In the days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it” (Isaiah 2:2). In the Book of Revelation it becomes apparent that not only are we going to God’s house, but that the human family together, has been invited to nothing less than the Wedding Feast of the Lamb (see Revelation 19). The Solemnity we celebrate today serves a beautifully curative purpose by awakening us to the reality that despite what the current public and ecclesial conversation occupies itself with, by our very nature, we are meant for something radically different. We have been created for perfect unity with one another in the unending feast of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom ruled by the King of Hearts.

The celebration of The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, was instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. Looking at the document which instituted the celebration, it is interesting to note that the reasons given for such a celebration are just as applicable today as they were 97 years ago. It is obvious in reading the document that the Church was looking around and seeing many of the same things we see today including leaders of nations that seemed to have their own interests in mind instead of serving their people well. Seeing this, the pope wished to remind people of a couple of things. First, despite what leaders may think of themselves, they in fact do not have absolute authority over the lives of the people they lead or even their own lives to be dispensed with as they wished. Instead, the pope wished to remind them that there was not “any 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” (Quas Primas, 18). Additionally, he reminded leaders that a nation is happy when its people live in concord with one another, and asserted that only Jesus Christ is the “author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation,” and therefore if “the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ” (ibid). What the pope recognized here, and what has not yet been realized by society at large is that it is only by recognizing the created order of things and by learning to see the beauty in it that we can find peace as a society. This process of recognition begins with humility, a humility that recognizes Christ as King of the Universe. Why? Because he made it, and made it with a certain order of beauty that can only be realized when all creation seeks him together.

Now, I realize that as members of a post-modern society we almost instinctively cringe at the idea that there is a higher power in our lives than ourselves. What is humorous is that we seem to think that it was by thousands of years of experience and inquiry that we have come to this conclusion. Yet, our brief look at Genesis has made clear that the human family has mistakenly sought after this since we first walked the earth. It was mistaken then, and it is mistaken now, and the reason we make this mistake is that we fail to recognize what sort of king it is whose authority we live under. In Quas Primas, Pope Pius XI writes that ‘Jesus Christ is the King of Hearts’ (7), and as our Gospel for today points out for us, this King reigns from the throne of the cross. He makes the cross his throne for one reason and one reason alone, and that is that it is precisely the cross that in a way unlike any other has the ability to demonstrate the depth and breadth of His perfect love. With arms outstretched He says, “look at me, I have held nothing back in my love for you, my love knows no bounds.”

The opening line of the document whereby Pope Francis proclaimed a Jubilee of Mercy in 2016 is instructive here as it adds to our understanding of the type of King Jesus Christ is. Pope Francis begins Misericordiae Vultus by writing that “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy,” and quickly adds that by His words, His actions, and His entire person, Jesus Christ reveals the mercy of God (1). What is the mercy of God? Most simply, the mercy of God is the Love that is God looking upon the sinner. Yes, Jesus Christ reveals something of the nature of God that is so mind blowing and extraordinary that we could never even have imagined or hoped for had it not been revealed to us by the Son of God Incarnate. What is revealed is, as St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “the love of man is a proper mark of the divine nature…” (Address on Religious Instruction, p. 15). In other words, God, by his very nature, is philanthropic, a lover of the human family. Accordingly, God so desired to demonstrate His love for the human family that He was willing to do anything, even go so far as to experiencing a tragic and gruesome death so that by looking upon Him we may be motivated to love Him back. For as St. Augustine writes, “there is nothing that invites another’s love more than to take the initiative in loving…” (De catechizandis rudibus, 4.7).

This is precisely what we see experienced by the good thief crucified next to Jesus in our gospel reading for today, traditionally known as St. Dismas. Having been graced with a front row seat to the mystery of salvation, the thief recognizes three key things. The first we cannot see and it is what has just been explained, that in looking upon Jesus Christ, the thief is awakened to the love that is God. What Dismas experiences here is captured by Hans Urs von Balthasar’s use of the analogy of a mother’s smile. A mother repeatedly smiles at her newborn infant, and for a time, there is no reciprocating response. But, one day, a day which cannot be anticipated, the child smiles back! Something has been awakened in them. The child now realizes on a very basic level that there is another who loves them, and who they can love in return, and so they smile. For Balthasar, the Incarnation of the Son is the smile of God, shining most intensely on the Cross. And it is by seeing this smile of God, that something awakens in us. We are awakened to the fact that we are loved by God and we have been made by and for this Love. There is no other way for this realization to be awakened after the Fall according to Balthasar. He writes, “just as no child can be awakened to love without being loved, so too no human heart can come to an understanding of God without the free gift of his grace—in the image of his Son” (Love Alone is Credible, 76).

Having recognized the smile of God in Christ, Dismas now comes to two subsequent realizations. Seeing what real love is he realizes how far short he has fallen in living a life of love and feels as though he is unable to love Him in return. It is out of this recognition of his having failed to love that he says to Gestus: “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal” (Luke 23:40-41). In this, Dismas exemplifies what Adam and Gestus could not, the remorse of a repentant heart. The virtue of repentance at work in Dismas helps him understand that he must love, but that he cannot do so without being loved first, and so he says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). In Dismas we see the powerful impact that God desires to have in all hearts by having His Son raised as the sign of His love before the entire world.

My friends, it is this wondrously beautiful act of love which we celebrate today! We have a King who desires not to be served but to serve (Matthew 20:28 & Mark 10:45); a King who gave His life out of love for us (John 15:13); a love which desires life to the fullest for those who are loved (John 10:10); and a King who as Creator knows that true freedom can only be had by living a life of love in return (Galatians 5:13-14). And so today, the Church holds up before the entire world the face of God’s Mercy, Jesus Christ, and proclaims him King of the universe, not in order that we may tremble before Him in fear, but that by looking upon the Face of the King of Hearts our hearts might be motivated to love Him in return, and to do so by loving one another. By doing so, we ‘minister to the needs of the present day, and at the same time provide an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society’ (Quas Primas, 24). For every time we choose to respond to Love in love, we move one step closer to overcoming the divisions opened by our first parents, and realizing the kingdom which Jesus Christ came to proclaim and establish (Mark 1:15).

Your servant in Christ,

Tony