Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This feast of Christ the King is wonderful and very popular but resist turning it into something
sweet and melancholic. We can become addicted to these sweetened feast days like the Sacred Heart of Jesus and then we spend the whole day in a little room with an image of the Sacred Heart. We can do this to any feast or any solemnity, even today’s. What is this feast for? I mean I already know that Christ is not your king, and I know that he is not mine either so be at peace. I sense we are all in agreement on this.
I hope someday we may believe that Jesus Christ is our king. And for your what does it mean that Jesus Christ is king or what does it mean that you are called to have Jesus Christ king of your life? What Jesus says to Pilate is very profound. He says, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, if my kingdom were of this world, I would resist evil, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. What does this world do? This world resists evil, it gets revenge, it seeks justice; this is the world. And it has its kings and governors, dictators and emperors, judges and everyone who governs very well. But only in the sense that they are the ones who make the others pay.
But Christ says my kingdom is not of this world and for that reason it does not resist evil. That is why I turn the other cheek; this is the kingdom of the Lord. And this is what the Lord will do in your life when he is king.
You already realize that he is not king of your life because you have the kingdom of the world within you: justice, an eye for an eye, resisting evil, running away from suffering. But Christ the King enters into suffering, enters the cross, turns the other cheek. When they are killing him, when they are insulting him, despising him, he will love them. This is a kingdom that is not of this world. No one in this world can do it, no one but Christ and a Christian, who has Christ within him. Christ reigns in the saints. This is why the martyrs enter death singing and blessing the Lord, why? They have this intimacy, this relationship with Christ and this is verified by many eyewitnesses.
In the last century, 20th century, especially in Spain there was an enormous religious persecution in the 1930s and 1940s. The martyrs died saying: Long Live Christ the King and were shot. The same persecution took place in Mexico, and they were killed as they shouted: Vivo Cristo Rey! (The Hollywood movie For Greater Glory depicts this.) Christ was already reigning in them, and he is the one who gave them this strength and that is why they can accept this time of suffering and death. But with Christ it is not a suffering; they enter into the glory of heaven.
It is important to understand this. Christ came not to reign as the disciples imagined or as we imagined as something great and spectacular. No, no, he reigns as a quiet lamb going to the slaughter. He came to reign on the cross. There is an ancient hymn that says, God reigns from the wood of the cross. The kingdom of heaven is God’s love in your life. The kingdom of heaven is here. And in a few minutes, we are going to move to this wonderful banquet where Christ gives himself one more to us and wants to be king of your life.
He will die and rise again for you in this Eucharist, in every Mass. When we eat this bread and drink this blood, we are making actual, making real his Passover Mystery; that, is he passes from death to life, not physically but sacramentally. The kingdom of God is wonderful and gives us an enormous help in our life. We are not just remembering what happened 2,000 years ago, no! Today he dies and rises again for you. Do you need his resurrection today? I think so. I need him to die for my sins today, the ones I thought about at the start of the Mass when we said: Let us acknowledge our sins and ask the Lord for his mercy and forgiveness. He died for those sins and wants to bring you to heaven not at the end of your life, but today. Every Eucharist leads us to heaven; it takes us to heaven.
Christ reigns from the cross. He lets himself be killed, accepting injustice always. How wonderful is Jesus Christ, the perfectly innocent one. There is no one more innocent than him. He had an unjust trail with Pilate without an attorney, without someone defending him. No one defended him in front of false witnesses. Anyone would realize this trial was unfair. They arrested him at night, in the dark, with spears as if he were a thief. And in a few hours he was judged and killed. How unjust, how cruel! And what does he do? He is silent, doesn’t say a word.
To Pilate’s question: ‘are you king of the Jews?’ Jesus answers: ‘my kingdom does not belong to this world…you say that I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth.’ He is not the king of the Jews, but king of the universe. This is wonderful, brothers and sisters. Pilate asks cynically, ‘what is truth?’ The gospel does not say more. Christ from that moment on remains silent. He never opens his mouth again. This is precious because the truth is to remain silent in the face of the injustice of Pilate. That is the truth. The truth is that he loves. I give my life for you. He is quiet. This is the truth. This gospel is spectacular.
And where does this gospel take place, where does it happen? In the praetorium, which is a place the Jews cannot enter because it is impure. The ones who enter it become impure. Christ enters there and becomes impure. He does this out of love for you. What is your praetorium today? Christ wants to enter it in order to give his life there for you! He wants to receive the scourging for you. There is a song that says, you have received the lashings of lust for me so that I receive love and purity from you.
You have been crucified for me so that I may receive the resurrection from you. A beautiful song. How much you have loved me, Lord. What praetorium do you have today? An impure place that Christ is not able to enter, but he does enter and gives his life to save you, to make you a new man, so that you may reign out of humility, of love, in simplicity, so you can give yourself. The Lord gives his life for this reason. He wants to reign in you.