Vigils Reading

O KING OF ALL NATIONS

From a treatise by St Hilary of Poitiers

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[A verse from the second Psalm says:] Ask of me, and I will give you

the nations to be your inheritance and the ends of the earth to be

your possession. Christ has indeed received the nations as the inheritance he

asked for. When was this? It was when he prayed: Father, the hour has come.

Give glory to your Son that he may give glory to you, since you have given him

authority over the whole human race, to give eternal life to all those you have

given him.

This, then, is Christ’s inheritance: the whole human race, to whom he

desires to give eternal life. All nations are to be baptized, instructed, and born

again to new life. No longer will they be subject to the government of angels

referred to in the inspired Song of Moses, nor will they be divided up among the

angels in proportion to their numbers; they will be received into the Lord’s

family and reckoned as servants of God. From the dominion of unjust rulers

they will be taken into God’s eternal kingdom. In the past Israel alone was the

Lord’s portion and Jacob his allotted heritage; but now the whole company of

nations has become a single people, the people of the one and only God. All who

are to rise from the dead form the everlasting inheritance of God’s eternal Son,

the firstborn from the dead.

You will rule them with a rod of iron; you will shatter them

like the potter’s vessel. To many people these words seem to conflict with

the goodness of God. Are the nations which the Son of God asked for and

received as his inheritance to be terrorized by an iron rule and smashed like

vessels of clay? No good person, they say, gives or receives anything for the

purpose of destroying it. Does not the Lord prefer the repentance of sinners to5

their death? How then will he be acting in accordance with the nature he claims

to have if he shatters with an iron rod those whom he has asked for as his

inheritance?

These people misunderstand the divine decrees or else fail to recognize

their justice and propriety. You will rule them means that Christ will lead

them like a shepherd, guiding them with a shepherd’s loving care, for he is the

Good Shepherd and we the sheep for whom he laid down his life.