Getting Ready to Meet Christ the King

Is Jesus the King of the Jews? Pilate is speaking not just to Jesus today, but to you and to me. Is he the King? For if we believe that he is the King, the Son of Man who will return at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, then we seek to make our lives worthy of his Kingdom.  

Even though, so often, we fall victim to the temptations of the Prince of this World, who lays before us all kinds of false kingdoms.  Worldly kingdoms of power and prestige, of wealth and of comfort, where all streets lead to the worship of me, twisting and turning the truth to make it all conform my will and to where I want to go.

But Christ’s Kingdom, as he told us, is not of this world; For it is the dwelling place of God, illumined by the Glory of the Lamb, where there is no more death, nor mourning nor crying out or pain. Its’ streets are paved with the sacrifices of those who have washed their robes in the Blood of the Lamb, the Blood by which he has made us a Kingdom of Priests, destined eternally to be joined in one grand chorus of joyous praise to the glory of the one true King, the “the One who is and who was and who is to come.”

And we are made for this Kingdom, you and I.  It’s the reason we were born: made for the eternal praise of the One who will come at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, and who will lead us home to a Kingdom of truth and of life, of holiness and grace, of love and of peace.

Not that we have to go there, mind you. Not that we we are forced to choose to wash our robes in his Blood, to answer his invitation to the Supper of the Lamb, or to rise with those who have chosen to love others as he has loved them. 

No, we can freely choose the Kingdom of Darkness. We can choose not to love, not to forgive and not to worship God. We can choose to bow down before the Prince of this world, the Lord of neglect, perdition and sin.  And believing all his empty promises, we can choose “the fiery lake of burning sulfur…the second death,” an eternity “locked in the prideful rejection of God's love.”

Which is what brings us to the reason why the Church gives us this feast of Christ the King, and chooses the ancient prayer that will end the Mass today: that, “in obedience to the commands of Christ, the King of the universe, we [might] live with him eternally in his heavenly Kingdom.”

Perhaps it’s also the reason the Church ends the month of November the same way she began it: by remembering death and judgement and the choices we have to make. For death, like this last Sunday of the Church’s year, reminds me of the end, when someday my body will lay in a coffin before the Paschal Candle and those who loved me will come to my Funeral.  

As I get older, I think all the more of my death, of how it will all end and the choices I will make in the meantime. I often tell my friends that if at my Funeral someone gets up and preaches a long eulogy about how good I was, they should should throw something at him. For those who truly love me when I die will not praise me, but they will get down on their knees and beg God to forgive me for all my sins and lead me to the Kingdom of Heaven.

For those who love us, and those we love…we’re all are bound together in death just as much as they ever were in life: bound by a solemn obligation to pray that God will forgive us our sins and lead us to everlasting life. 

I started November on all Souls Day, by going to a florist not far from Saint John’s Cemetery in Worcester and buying twelve baskets of flowers. And over the rest of the day I visited all of my dead relatives, putting a funeral basket on each grave, singing the In paradisum and begging God to forgive their sins.

So, as this year comes to an end, let us remember the last things.  By praying for the dead: that God will forgive their sins. And while we are at it, trying to live a life worthy of the Kingdom of God.

Saint Cecelia and Gratitude in Suffering

There are seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin Mary, commemorated in the Roman Canon. Perpetua, Felicity, Agnes, Cecilia, Agatha, Lucy, and Anastasia, all of them martyrs enjoying extensive devotion by the fifth century when this Eucharistic Prayer was first composed.

A few moments ago we prayed that “what has been devoutly handed down concerning [Saint Cecilia] might offer us examples to imitate.” So what has been handed down that we might imitate it?

As far as we know, Cecilia was born into a wealthy Roman family, raised a Christian and piously carried the Gospels with her wherever she went. Consecrated from birth to a life of virginity, she converted her first husband on their wedding night after which the couple spent all their time burying the martyrs provided by the frequent Christian persecutions.

When the prefect of Rome grew tired of this troublesome couple, he executed her husband and soon decided to have Cecilia killed as well.

According to the legend, when the soldiers came to arrest her, Cecilia converted them and they were baptized, “amidst loud hymns of thanks.”

The next day, wishing only to be rid her, the prefect ordered that she be suffocated in the baths. But from within the sealed chambers they heard her voice crying out: "I thank You, Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, that through Your Son the fire will be been extinguished.” And as they looked below the baths the fires went out.

So they tried to cut off her head; but as the executioner’s blade hit her neck for the third time, she is said to have yelled out “I thank you for your cross…” At which her lips fell silent, never to thank God again, until she stood with the angels before the throne of the God who never abandoned her.

So what has been handed down that we might imitate it?

The grace to give thanks when they arrest you, when they boil you and when the sword falls. “In all things give thanks to God…” (1 Thessalonians 5:18a)

Veterans' Day

It is good that Veterans’ day falls in the month of November, when the Church asks us to pray for the dead. For while this day honors all veterans, living and dead, its origins lie in Armistice day, commemorating the end of the first World War, one hundred and one years ago today.

It’s ironic, in a way, that as we honor all who have served our country, it is the moment of armistice, the moment that they ceased fighting wars that we commemorate. But then again, the whole purpose of the armed services is to end all wars and to make the ultimate sacrifice to bring peace to our shores.

For peace is something that every veteran, more than anyone else, desires with their whole heart and soul. Few and far between are the military men who glory in battle as something more than a means to an end.  They fight that there might be no more fighting and sacrifice that future generations will not have to.

Our greatest war time presidents have understood that.  Abraham Lincoln, who led the nation through our bloody Civil war gave a speech in Philadelphia and cautioned against those who see war as grand or glorious. “War at its best,” he warned, “is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.”¹

Franklin Roosevelt used to refer to war as a contagion, a disease and famously spoke of his hatred of it. “I have seen war,” he proclaimed at Chatauqua. “I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen two hundred limping exhausted men come out of line-the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward forty-eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”²

And President Eisenhower, who picked up where Roosevelt stopped, likened war to hanging humanity on a cross of iron, reminding us that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”³

All of whose views are reflected in the words of Pope Pius XII, who warned that "the calamity of a world war, with the economic and social ruin and the moral excesses and dissolution that accompany it, must not on any account be permitted to engulf the human race for a third time."⁴

I can see Pope Paul VI, the first Pope to address the United Nations, proclaiming loudly from its podium “No more war. war never again!”

So let us pray for those who have sacrificed so much for us.  Let us pray for those who died in Iraq, who were maimed or disfigured fighting ISIS in Syria, or who stand guard at lonely outposts in South Korea tonight. May God reward them for their vigilance and their sacrifice.

But let us pray that the need for their service might be brought to an end. That the covetous desires of evil hearts to dominate or control, to take what belongs to others or to violate the rights of peoples might cease and that all might “turn from evil and do good…seek peace and pursue it.”⁵

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1 - Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1864.

2 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address at Chautauqua, August 14, 1936.

3 - Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953.

4 - Pope Pius XII's broadcast message, Christmas 1941.

5 - 1 Peter 3:11.