The King (Jesus enthroned in Heaven) said, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (St. Matthew 25:40).
We have come to the last Sunday of the Church Year, which we celebrate as the “Feast of Christ the King.” We began the Church Year (which we will do again next Sunday) with the First Sunday of Advent, when we heard (and will hear) of the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as King and Judge. During the months between the first and last Sundays of the Church Year is the story of the whole life of Jesus – from the ministry of John the Baptist all the way through to His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and then the many accounts of our Lord’s teachings (largely in His parables), His healings, and His miracles.
The Church sets all of this before us to reinforce the fact that Jesus Christ is so many things for us, and for the world – God Incarnate, Lord, Master, Savior, Redeemer, Teacher, Healer, Exorcist, but quintessentially the King of kings now, and for all eternity.
In the Gospel according to St. John, Jesus (as He stood before Pontius Pilate) states twice, that His kingship is different from that of earthly kings, because it is neither of the world, nor from the world. He as the Son of God came from heaven to earth, and to heaven He returned at His Ascension, where He “sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.”
He came down from heaven to take those who believe in Him to heaven. He will come again in power and great glory from heaven to judge the quick and the dead, as we heard at the beginning of this morning’s Gospel reading: “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” It will be the fulfillment of what He said to the disciples in one of His Resurrection appearances, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me” (St. Matthew 28:18).
You and I know that an earthly king reigns because of royal lineage. He rules with great power and authority. Jesus, the King of kings, reigns because of divine lineage as the only-begotten Son of God. He rules with absolute power and authority – “His the scepter, his the throne.”
We gladly and thankfully live in a democratic nation, which was founded by our forefathers to give and to guarantee “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” for “all men who are created equal” – so declared in the Declaration of Independence. We threw off the monarchy of England through bloody and costly conflict, but as Christians, we embrace the Monarchy of Jesus.
As members of the Church, who through Holy Baptism were each made individually “a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of God,” we live out that new life (that second birth) corporately – now, and with the promise and hope of eternal life forever in the Kingdom of God.
This earthly life (as you all well know) is a short span of time in light of eternity. We are each, “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes,” as St. James writes in his Epistle. We have been given life by God through our fathers and mothers to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever in and through Christ Jesus. Each and every day provides us with the opportunity to grow in our knowledge and love of the Lord, as we “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) – “straining forward to what lies ahead…, as we “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
As we do this, we live in this world, within and amidst its normal and predictable elements, which we cannot and should not avoid, and which demand our involvement and our Christian witness. We also face unexpected and unpredicted challenges and crises also, which we cannot avoid, and which demand involvement and the exercise of our faith.
Jesus send, “Render … to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (St. Matthew 22:21).
There are some who are called or who choose to distance themselves from the world as much as they can – such as the Amish, or the religious, who take life vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity – who live in their own communities. Some of these religious live cloistered lives, with minimal contact with the world.
Most Christians, whatever their race or country, are called to live in the world, while heaven is recognized as their heart’s true longing, and their eternal home. They pray that they be good citizens of their country, and of God’s kingdom. They are always to be prayerfully striving to make personal and corporate decisions critically, responsibly, and wholistically, as they engage themselves with what St. Paul calls “the whole counsel of God” – seeking divine wisdom to understand and embrace the mission of the Church, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “…is to proclaim the establish the Kingdom of God begun by Jesus Christ among all peoples. The Church constitutes on earth the seed and the beginning of the Salvific Kingdom” (Para. 768).
Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote in his book, Render Unto Caesar:
“The Christian idea of witness, which comes from the Greek word martyr, isn’t limited to a bloody battle in the arena for the faith. All Christians have the command to be a martyr in the public arena – to live a life of conscious witness wherever God places them, no matter how significant it seems and whether or not they ever see the results“ (P. 43).
Beyond living “a life of conscious witness” to the Truth as we know it in Jesus Christ (as Archbishop Chaput stated), we are to do good works in our lives – to all who we can, as best we can – in so doing, we are doing it for Christ, and (as we heard in the Gospel for today) to Christ. Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”
Our faith (which as a gift is to be always growing, as I said last Sunday) is to manifest itself in good works.
The Church through its ministries and members is to engage itself in what has been taught as the “Corporal Works of Mercy“ (based on what today’s Gospel passage from St. Matthew), they being seven in number (seven being the perfect number, signifying in this context the complete elements of Christian social action and care): “feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, harboring the stranger, visiting the sick, ministering to prisoners, and burying the dead.”
The Church revolutionized the world, and established its integrity of faith in doing these things. And, as we see in the Gospel, there is a direct relationship between doing them, and inheriting the Kingdom of God. In other words, there is a reward given to those who minister to Jesus in ministering to those in need.
The Christian life is a day-to-day, day-after-day pilgrimage on which we are to be humble before God in doing things beyond ourselves, being attentive for opportunities to so do. This is clearly a very critical requirement, in order to claim that we are indeed loyal subjects of the King – who are to “serve the Lord with gladness, and [to] come before his presence with a song” (Psalm 100:2).
In the St. Augustine’s Prayer Book, there is a marvelous prayer in the section, “Morning Prayers,” which reads:
“O God, thou art my God, who hast me for thyself. O Lord, Heavenly Father, to thee I devote my heart, and my entire life. Grant me thy grace, I implore thee, that this day I may live as in thy presence, and walk in the path of thy commandments, following the example of my Savior Christ, and being made like unto him. Give to me thy Holy Spirit that, trusting only in him, I may overcome those sins which beset me. Vouchsafe, O gracious God, to me and to…. such blessings as we need both temporal and spiritual. I ask in the Name and through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen”
Prayer lets God in, and, in its effectuality, shapes us daily to love and serve the Lord and others as we are called to do. It is the necessary ingredient because in Him, as St. Paul preached in Athens, “we live and move and have our being.”
So may our hearts this day crown the Lord Jesus with many crowns – crowns of His deserving, laden and forged with our gladness for Who He is – the King of kings, and Lord of lords, and for whom we are – loyal and humble servants.