Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Corpus Christi Church, Manhattan

Solemnity of Christ the King, Year C

November 20, 2022

2 Sm 5:1-3, Ps 122, Col 1:12-20, Lk 23:35-43

 

To listen to a recording of the homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.20.22_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Today we celebrate with great joy the Solemnity of Christ the King. It is the last Sunday of the liturgical year and, in many ways, the culmination of everything we have marked up until now — the goal of Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, Pentecost and Corpus Christi and of all the Sundays and feasts throughout the year. They have all pointed toward this reality, that Christ is the King of the Universe, the Lord of all, the judge of the living and the dead. All of time, all of history, is heading toward this climax when Christ will be revealed to people of every race, nation and religion as the universal King of Kings.

* The reality of the cosmic proportions of Christ’s kingship is attested to by St. Paul in today’s reading from his Letter to the Colossians. Christ the King is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, through, for and in whom all things were created in heaven and on earth and in whom they hold together. He is the beginning, before all things, the firstborn from the dead, and the dwelling place of divine fullness. He is the one who has reconciled both heaven and earth, in whom we have redemption, who has delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to his kingdom. This the King we celebrate.

* But as we see in today’s Gospel, the last thing that Jesus looked like as he hung upon the Cross on Good Friday was a king. He was bathed in blood, not clothed with royal purple. He was hammered to a Cross, not seated on a throne. He was crowned with thorns, not with many crowns of gold and diadems. To ridicule him and humiliate the Jews, Pilate had ordered that an inscription in three languages be hammered above his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Rather than pay him homage, most in the crowd mocked him. The chief priests mocked him. The Roman soldiers and passers-by mocked him. Even the thieves crucified with him mocked him. And all of them derided him in the same way: “If you’re truly the king of the Jews, the Messiah, the Christ, come down from that Cross and save yourself.” Such visible force was the only demonstration of kingly power they could comprehend.

* For most Jews at the time, Jesus’ crucifixion was the proof that he was precisely notthe long-awaited Messiah-king for whom they had longed for centuries. In the first reading, we see the beginning of David’s kingship in Jerusalem. The Jews anticipated that when the Son of David finally came, he would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled. He would defeat all foreign powers and would be brutal to those who opposed him. When David marched into Jerusalem, right after the end of today’s first reading, the inhabitants of Jerusalem who opposed David told him that even the blind and the lame of the city were united in opposition against him and would defeat him. So when David’s men took the city, they went up and attacked even the blind and the lame. The Jews anticipated that the Messiah-King would use his power to subjugate all those who made themselves his adversaries, rather than take their abuse and die an ignominious death to save his abusers. They were totally unprepared for a king who would serve at all, not to mention serve his executions to the point of death.

* The Romans were likewise unprepared for a king like Jesus. When Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus, he asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered,