In this podcast, Fr. Eric Nicolai reflects on the authority of Christ as King of heaven and earth to help us renew our desire for Christ to reign deeply in our hearts and to proclaim with the saints and martyrs, "Long live Christ the King!"

The Solemnity of Christ the King was established in the 1920s by Pope Pius XI in response to the great rise of secularism in which people increasingly lived their lives as if God didn't exist. It is not unlike the battles and crises that we are confronting today that also fuel our desire to spread God's kingdom on earth. But for that to happen, Christ has to reign in our hearts now.

Fr. Eric reflects on the ways in which we see Christ depicted as king in scripture and in art. Among those images is Jesus's entry into Jerusalem on a humble donkey. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest” (Mt 21:9). What is an hosanna? Hosanna is a word that was used in the Hebrew liturgy, and then later in the Christian liturgy, as a shout of jubilation and a sign of respect and honor for he who saves. But in Jerusalem, it was especially a shout of praise and adoration and a kind of recognition of Jesus as the Messiah.

Like those people, we can also offer so many hosannas to Our Lord to acknowledge him as our king. Fr. Eric encourages us to throw our cloaks under Our Lord as a beautiful sign of our submission to his will. We want to let him trample on our comforts and willfulness, under his donkey, so that we rely more not on our things but on his will, and so that his will is what really reigns in our heart.

Tune in as we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King.

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