Christ the King
October 27, 2024
Dear Brethren,
We have today this immense joy to celebrate our King, our Lord Jesus Christ, Christ the King, as we say. But what do we mean when we say that? What's the real meaning? Today, when we say King, of course, we have an idea of a crown on the head. But most of the kings today, it's just a title, no power.
When we say King, we say much more than just a crown. In fact, this feast which we celebrate today is not that old, less than 100 years. And we could say, well, is that a new finding of the church? By no means. Of course not. The church, because it's even in the Holy Scripture, it's from the beginning, has always, always honored our Lord Jesus Christ as King. Even the name Lord, when we say in Latin, Dominus, or our Lord, we mean even more than a king. We mean God. But we could say we have two titles, two titles of the kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Lord is King as God through creation
The first is God, assuming a human nature, true man, but the person, there is only one person in our Lord, is God. And so, what we say of God, what we say of all the attributes of God, especially as our creator, as our Governor, we must attribute to Jesus and to Jesus as man, as human being. Once again, there's only one Person, and the Person is God. When you hear Jesus say, I, I tell you, or me, this I, this me, is almighty God, creator of heaven and earth. And so, we hear today in the epistle to the Colossians, “in Him everything has its consistency. Everything exists for him, in him.” We exist, God has created us, for Him. He is our purpose. And more than that, from Him we have received everything, everything. He is our creator: we are in absolute, complete dependency on Him. Simple, simple, my dear brethren. I cannot move one finger, if He does not give me the strength to do that, I cannot have one thought, if He does not give the existence to it. I cannot have a feeling, I cannot have a desire, I cannot make a decision, if He does not give me the necessary push, He is my creator. I depend on Him. Already there, already there, of course, we must be overwhelmed by this domination, total, absolute.
But we must not forget, if He has created me, it's because He loves me. This look, this look on me, constant, which makes me exist, is a benevolent, a loving look. Oh, yes, He does have power, not just some, as they said, all power, everything. And we, we unfortunately, because our nature has been spoiled by sin, whenever we speak of the power above us, we have a kind of feeling of restriction, of constraint, of something which goes against freedom. I have to submit, so I cannot do what I want. So wrong we are, because precisely, because we pretend, because we want to put our freedom above anything… It's not true, it's not correct. That's the modern thinking, that's the liberal one, that those who have rebelled against God, who pretend that. But we, we live in this world, and so easily, these wrong ideas about freedom have hurt us. When we speak of law, we have this impression that’s something which is oppressing us, it's not true. In the Psalms, it is God talking to us and telling us how real it is, we say: “because we are weak, you have given us laws.” The laws, they are there to help us, not to block us. They are to block sin, not good things. They are, in fact, they are not a barrier, they are a guardrail. Look at the expressway, they are on the side. Are they an obstacle to the cars? By no way, they help, they show the way, they prevent the cars to go outside. But yes, if a car wants to go away from the road, then, and only then, they become an obstacle. They will hurt the car if you hit the guardrail, but if you hit the guardrail, that means you are no longer on the right path: and so the law, and so the punishment. You see how wrong we are?
There is a prayer just to show the right attitude we should have. It's a prayer which the priest says every day, in the morning prayer of the priest in the breviary at prime, but it's also one which we have at every mass in the Hanc Igitur. It's about the same prayer. We say to God, “dies nostros in tua pace disponas”, dispose of my days in your peace. We know that He loves us. We know that He wants our good, and so we trust Him back, and we trust Him so much that we say, you are the Lord, you have all power above me, so dispose, I give myself, I give everything, dispose of my days in your peace. In the morning we say, “dies et actus nostros”, our days and our actions, everything, dispose. You are God. You are my king. You love me. I want to trust you.
Our Lord is King as Redeemer through grace
Beside the first title of the kingship of Christ, there is another one, which is linked to our poor situation of sinners. We sin. We have lost our freedom. We have become slaves, slaves of the devil, lost the friendship with God, really slaves of the devil. And one of the first things that the church is going to do at baptism is to kick out the devil. It's really true. Let me tell you a little story. A real one happened to one of our priests. It was in New Caledonia. At the moment of the exorcism, when we recast out the devil, a black smoke came out of the ear of the little child. And it just was there floating for a while, showing how the devil was cast out. It's a reality. That's why we start with this exorcism. We kick him out. But why are we able to kick him out? That's the second title of our Lord. We call Him the Redeemer. Redeemer, redemption, comes from the Latin. “Emere” means to pay. He has paid the price to free us. And the price is His blood, His Passion, His death on the cross. By this, He literally becomes our owner, by redemption, by paying the price. We go from the slavery of the devil into the dominion of our Lord. And this second title, you find it again in the epistle of today, when we speak about the church, because being redeemed, with this, the gates of heaven are reopened. We can recover the friendship with God, the life of God is really infused in us. We become children, children of God. Thanks to this passion. Once again, here we will see this total dependency on God. Not just to exist, that was the first title. This time, to live as children of God. But again there, we need this constant, constant flow of graces, which come from the head. Because he's the head. The head of the church. And as in any kind of body, all the orders come from the head. So in the mystical body, all the life of the body flows from the orders of the head. You know the words, you know the words of our dear holy saint, Pius X, who made it his moto: “Instaurare omnia in Christo.” To restore everything in Christ. And this is also the reason of this feast. Why? Pope Pius XI, seeing how this modern world is rebelling with these modern ideas of liberalism, atheism, communism, how they rebel against our Lord, he said: “okay, we are going to institute this feast to remember, to recall everybody He's the king, He's the head, everything.”
This life of God, God has put it in this human nature. He has made it such that this human nature is the instrument of our sanctification. Everything, all the graces we receive from God, we receive through His crucified human nature. Everything. That's why we are going to speak of the “gratia capitalis”, the grace of the head. Can you understand that? All the holiness of all the saints, absolutely all the saints, reside first in the human nature of our Lord, and from there it flows to us. Now, this word “to r estore everything in Christ”, when you look to the Greek, you will have, I would say, a more precise explanation of what's happening; “Encephalaios hastai”, means to bring back everything to the head. We have the word recapitulate or if you want “sum up”, the sum is the head, the height. Recapitulare, caput is the head: bring everything back to the head. He's the head. We want to bring back order. We want to go away from all this revolution, rebellion? We have to bring everything back to the head, which is our Lord, which was amongst us. No, not was, is., right now, there, in the tabernacle. He's there. The real Jesus, as you are here, He's here, in His humanity. He's God. He's man. He's here. He's the almighty God. Eternal. Of infinite power. He's there. He's with us. He is our head. He is our king. We must show Him that we do recognize Him. We must repair for those who doubt.
The modern world uncrowned Our Lord
And there, we touch the second part of the sermon, and I’ll try to make it a little bit shorter. The modern world, and in a certain way, even the modern church, no longer want Him to reign. They may still speak of king, they no longer think that it's possible, that He could be the King of nations. Again, a true story, my story: in front of the congregation of the faith, they are there, all the top guys, I try to explain to them that we try to do all our best to bring back, not just the individuals, but the nations, bring them back to Christ! And you know what they answered me? They said it in French: Bonne chance! In other words, good luck. I was discouraged. What kind of faith do they have? Do they really believe that He is the king? Now! Not in the future! Do they realize that every, absolutely every human being, who is exercising whatever power or authority, from the family father or mother to the governor of the province or the state, is it Trudeau, is it Putin, is it Biden, whoever, their power, they have received it from our Lord Jesus Christ. And if Jesus would not have lent them this power, they would simply not have it. And one of the best proofs that it is true, it’s that at the end of their life, they will give account of the way they have used this power. They will stand in front of our Lord, the judge, and they will have to give account, of what they did, with the power He gave them. And my dear Brethren, it is so obvious that even the civil society has power, it is true, but only for one reason, only for one reason, and it is to help us go to heaven. It is the only reason, because that is our end. Of course we belong to a human society, of course, we do. But this human society in which we live, is there, necessary, but only for one reason: to help us make our heaven, go to heaven. And so, whenever this human society pretends to be independent, to have nothing to give account to a higher power, they are astray, they are wrong.
And what do they do then with their power? They make laws which go even against nature. They transform this earth into hell. And we are living in such a time. They persecute the good. They elevate and glorify the evil. Worse it could not be. Is our Lord gone? No way. He is just hiding Himself, which does not mean that He does not exercise His power, we just don't see it. Because He made us free. Because He wants us to merit, through the exercise of this freedom, through the exercise of the faith. He wants us to merit these graces and our salvation. He paid for it, but He wants our cooperation. That is why He is hiding it. If He would show that He is the king, everybody would just be flat down. That will happen at the very end of the world: He will at that moment show His majesty. And not an angel, not any man will be able to stand, they all will kneel, and even prostrated. Because He is almighty God.
What our answer must be
And so today we want to protest, that we do recognize His power, over us, over the church, over the human society. And we will make this procession outside, with our Lord Himself. We will accompany Him on the streets, to proclaim, to protest: We want Him to reign. And Jesus consoles us. How is His kingship going to come back? My dear brethren, of course, it will depend on Him. But He wants our cooperation. So, what is our part in it? So simple. So simple. Look at how a war is won, any kind of battle. Of course, you have the general. He is the one who gives the orders. But if the soldiers do not follow the orders, if each one of the soldiers is not doing his part, at his place, you don't get the victory. It's only when the soldiers obey, when they follow, when they do what we call their duty of state, each one of us, at our place. So simple. If every Christian would do that, the victory would be there just now. Just doing our duty. Simple. Not complicate at all. And for this, our King is giving us all the graces. We need to do that. Count on him. Trust him. Don't be afraid by this crazy world. Who are they? Even the devil, even Lucifer, who is he against God, against our Lord?
You see, unfortunately, too often we have this impression that the battle between good and bad is something at equal. We see other people at our level, we think, we hope that we are good, we see others which are bad, and so we have this impression that the fight between good and evil is at equal, same level. It's wrong. It's not true. Evil can only come from creatures. Good comes from God, and God is infinitely higher than any evil. If an evil happens, it's only because God allows it. God fixes the limit of this evil. And God allows this thing to happen for our sanctification. It’s a hard point, it-s very hard for us to understand that. But you find it this way: saint Paul asking God to take away some of his temptations, and God answering: “No, my grace is enough, because the virtue is brought to perfection in tribulation.” Something we have a hard time to understand, that we need tribulations. If things are too easy, we take an easy life; we need to be pushed, we need to be strengthened constantly, and that happens in hard times. Very difficult to understand, that’s the whole mystery of the cross.
But it remains that God is there, and He wants us to be saved. You have a doubt? Look at Him! He went to the cross for us! He had absolutely no need to it! He did it just because He loves us, no necessity, just because He wants us to be saved, He put such a price. And we dare to doubt! Who are we? I tell you: nobody who trusts Him will be disappointed, nobody who shows the slightest generosity towards God. Nobody will beat God in generosity. If you are good, if you are generous, God will be even more. If you trust Him, if you count on Him, you shall be not disappointed, happy into eternity. Amen.