My dear people:

Paraphrased and adapted from a commencement speech at a college many years ago that is relevant to our feast of Christ the King:

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.  There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships.  Everybody adores something or someone.  The question is: what do I worship?  I get to make that choice: I get to decide which or whom I worship.  But I cannot not worship.  And the only compelling reason for me choosing to worship Jesus Christ is that He is the only true God and that pretty much anything else I worship will eat me alive.

That is exactly what GK Chesterton was saying a hundred years ago also.  This Sunday we celebrate the Kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Christ being King means that I do not have to be king for myself.  Christ being King means that no mere human is sitting on the altar of my heart for my worship only to disappoint me.  Christ being King means I don’t have to worship at the altar of any particular ideology or party or allegiance.  The Kingship of Christ is liberating and gives my life a new and upward orientation. His Kingship extends into this world, but it is not of this world.  When I celebrate Christ’s dominion over the whole universe, I cease to look to this world for my ultimate fulfilment.  Then things and people no longer have a hold over my life.  The burden is lifted.  And problems and the hassles and the troubles of this life no longer oppress my heart and depress my spirit.  If Christ truly reigns in my heart, I don’t have to expect the impossible of the things of this world, and I don’t have to hold on to them for my dear life, and I won’t be disappointed that they cannot fulfill me.  Once Christ truly reigns in my heart, I am freed from the anxiety of looking for happiness in all the wrong places.  I can now give them away.  Now I can say, in Christ my heart is filled to overflowing with joy and happiness even in the midst of tribulations.

‘¡Viva Cristo Rey!’ was the final confession on the lips of Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro, one of a number of martyrs of the Cristeros war.  He was not a resistance fighter but a Catholic priest of great wit and real courage who ran an underground ministry during Mexican civil war.  In 1927, Father Miguel was sentenced to death without due trial on sham charges for the attempted assassination of Mexico’s former president, President Álvaro Obregón. In reality, he was arrested and killed for nothing more than being a faithful Catholic priest.  Photographs of his execution were ordered by President Calles and were intended to show the cowardly death of a Catholic priest.  Ironically, what has been seared into the memory of Mexican Catholics is the very opposite of what Calles intended.  If you look at his picture in front of the firing squad with hands outstretched in the form of a cross, you’ll see a man with all the self-possession, all the serenity that Jesus displays in the encounter with Pilate in our Gospel.  ‘¡Viva Cristo Rey!’  Those were his very last words.  

And it’s this reality that crowns the end of our liturgical year: Christ the King lives; He has always lived; and He will always live!  And if we live in Him, we’ll find freedom, because we’ll cease to be slaves to created things, and instead know the freedom of the friendship He calls us into.

This week, I shall go back to my rectory and think seriously about what a difference Christ has already made in my life as a Catholic.  And I shall begin to pray that Christ be not only a part of my life, but that He be reigning there – totally and absolutely!  I shall imagine the freedom and the joy in my life once I have totally become totally His.  I shall pray tha I no longer depend for my happiness and satisfaction on the results of any election or the successes of any political party, that I am no longer dependent on certain pleasures or things and people in order to feel loved and appreciated and belonging.  I shall pray that Christ be soon the only One that possesses my heart and soul and mind and being.  I shall pray for the grace of living the new life with Christ as my King and Lord and Savior from now on, so that I may soon begin living the life God has always intended me to live in this world in order to be with Him in the next!