Father Clement Patrick: My Kingdom Is Not Of This World!
Cross-posted from Benedict XVI Institute for Africa.
Friends,
Whether we are aware of it or not, our earthly experience of power makes us unconsciously suspicious of titles like “King,” “Queen,” “Chief,” “Fon,” and also “President,” as the case may be. The images that may immediately come to mind could suggest for the most part absolute power, force, violence and arbitrariness; it could suggest dominion, domination, despotism. It could even conjure blood (if we remotely think of King Herod down the centuries through Hitler to 21st Century despots and till the very end of sinful humanity’s history). Then here comes young Jewish carpenter’s son, born in a borrowed stable because there are no rooms in the inn, presented in the temple with two turtle doves – a broke man’s version of temple offering. At thirty years of age, he begins to preach from a borrowed boat (Simon’s), is rejected by his putative subjects, and executed as a felon. He is even buried in a borrowed tomb. Shortly before this execution, as our gospel scene today tells us, he is interrogated by the procurator of this minor Roman jurisdiction whose perplexity we can all understand when he asks: ARE YOU THE KING OF THE JEWS?
To be fair, it is important to notice that up to this point, Jesus always slipped away when people tried to make him king, for such attempts were merely misunderstandings (John 6:15). He never for once in his public ministry referred to himself as such. As he now approaches his crucifixion, he can and must now reveal himself for who he is – the origin and goal of the world, its Alpha and Omega, as the Book of Revelation names him. So Yes, even though Pilate fails to comprehend the essence of his claim to kingship and the Jews downright reject him, he declares “YOU SAY THAT I AM A KING” because “I CAME INTO THE WORLD TO TESTIFY TO THE TRUTH.” The Truth is the Father’s love for the world, which the Son represents in his Life, death and resurrection. The Cross is the proof of the truth that the Father loves his creation that he permits even this to happen. The inscription of Pilate which he places on the Cross in the three world languages of that time unwittingly proclaims this truth to everyone. It is on this Cross and through his Resurrection that he has truly reigned and ruled the world, the whole universe, so that “All peoples, nations, and languages must serve him” as Daniel tells us.
To take it further, Christ’s response points us to the unprecedented and unsuspected dimension of his Kingship. MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD. IF MY KINDGOM DID BELONG TO THIS WORLD, MY ATTENDANTS WOULD BE FIGHTING TO KEEP ME FROM BEING HANDED OVER TO THE JEWS.” True enough, if Jesus’ kingdom belonged to this world, we would cling to the lies that so attract us. If Jesus had come arrayed with the symbols and instruments of worldly power, we would have been confirmed in our illusions – our entrenched belief that evil can be overcome by the means that worldly power affords. Yet God in his mercy wants to show us that the true nature of darkness lies in the human heart. Therefore, we understand that Jesus’ response to Pilate: “I came into the world to testify to the truth” also identifies those who are his subjects – “everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” What kind of King is this, though? The king who overcomes the power of sin and death from the inside, who attacks this power at its deepest roots, who allows himself to be crushed by all that sin of the human race from the beginning to the end of time, who is literally killed by this sin, and who nonetheless wins a definitive victory over sin and death by his passion, death and resurrection.
The kingship of Jesus Christ reveals the truth of the human condition and the reality of the efficacy of God’s merciful condescension in our regard. The injustice, tyranny, crimes, warfare, and mischief that thrive in our midst today and in very great proportions are the result of sin, and they cannot be overcome by programs or remedies, no matter how well-intentioned or well-organized, that come from within the created order. The error of Arianism, which still persists today in numerous modern offspring, is to think that our salvation can come from ourselves. The truth, however, lies elsewhere: MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD.
Christ is the king who rules first of all in our bodies and souls and hearts. Christ is our first ally and final solution in the interior struggle which confronts every human life. Only when we are transformed by the grace of Christ the king at work in us do we experience within ourselves the tranquility and peace of his reign. Only when transformed by the grace of Christ the king can we face all the drudgery and evil and pain and suffering and oppression that has become our daily companion with definitive Christian hope. Pope St Leo once asked: “what is more king-like that to find yourself ruler over your body after having surrendered your soul to God?” It should therefore not surprise us, friends, that the young man who came into the world with no armies, governors, senators, secretaries, counselors, divisions and battalions; the young man who apparently fell victim of the dark side of the Pax Romana to the point of being crucified, is just precisely the sort of king we really need, the sort of King that truly reigns over the universe.
When Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King in 1925 with his encyclical Quam Primus, he did so to mark the 1600th anniversary of the council of Nicaea, it is true. Yet a deeper reason played in the background – he saw the recognition of the reign of Christ as the surest remedy against the destructive forces unleashed by the First World War and which were already gathering strength for the Second World War. In order “to promote as fully as possible the royal dignity of our Redeemer” he wrote, “there seems to us that there would be nothing more appropriate that the institution of a special and proper feast of Christ the King. After this Holy Mass, we will take Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and publicly declare to the whole world that He is the king of the universe. Perhaps, like the past years, nothing dramatic may immediately change in our daily circumstances when we wake up tomorrow Monday to go about our activities – or their halt as the case may be – yet we will no longer be the same persons. In affirming Christ as our King, in rooting ourselves in his other-worldly kingdom, in hoping on the vistas of eternity which he has opened for us forever, we would have truly conquered with him, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. May Christ’s eternal and universal reign rule in our hearts, as the Preface of today’s Mass declares, “the reign of truth and of life, the reign of holiness and of grace, the reign of justice, of love and of peace.” Amen.
