Feast of Christ the King – Year A
Today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. This is the feast which is the culmination of the whole liturgical year. Christ is presented to us as the Good Shepherd, who cares for as His sheep, as the one who is Himself the culmination of all creation being drawn into oneness with God – “that God may be all in all”. But we celebrate this year by bringing the remembrance of our two brothers – Fr Carlos and Br Gaetan – the gold and the silver which we bring to the King , in order that God may be truly all in all, as we heard in the second reading. We celebrate their fifty years and twenty-five years of service to the Lord. But in doing so, we call to mind our own lives and that relationship with the Lord and with all humanity that we have.
At Baptism we were each anointed with chrism, indicating the three-fold nature of what is taking place. By that fact we are recognized by God Himself as priest, prophet and king. But we are called to exercise those ministries in various ways and forms.
Baptism makes us conformed to Christ – the primal Priest, Prophet and King. But such conformity calls us to allow Christ Himself to exercise these ministries in His own way. This is the way that we grow in conformity to Christ Himself. We are to discover at the depths of ourselves that grace, peace, unity that God is – not the God that I have venerated as an object, but the God that is one with the very source of my being and ALL being.
This God exercises His priestly office, his prophetic and His royal kingly office. He does this by our recognizing that same Christ present in the hearts and lives of every person we encounter. It is on this basis that we will be judged at the end of time, as we hear in the gospel: Christ in me responding to Christ in you – the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the prisoner and every other way that He presents Himself to us. At the end He presents all this to the Father – that God may be all in all.
Today we give thanks to God for our Fr. Carlos and Br. Gaetan who have withstood the trials and hardships of fifty and twenty-five years. But their years are intertwined with our years – yours and mine – for we are ultimately called to be the one Christ offering ourselves and all creation to the Father. This feast and this Eucharist serves as a reminder to each of us of that Eucharist when we gave ourselves to God as His priests and prophets and kings , as His monk . This renewal of their commitment calls each of us to renew our own commitment to God as His monk, His priest, His sheep. He shares His royal duties with each one in order that we may truly take our place in building His kingdom and rejoicing in the work that God has done in our brothers and in ourselves.
Jesus Christ is to be the summit of all creation and all peoples. But He can be this only to the extent that we each allow Him to truly rule within our hearts and our lives. Then we will all be that gold and that silver that is offered to the Father with love and joy, knowing that we have each striven to allow Christ to shine forth in each and in all.