Solemnity of Christ the King, Last Week in Ordinary Time

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

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana"
-Groucho Marx

Have you ever thought about time? Like what is it? What is one second? One minute? One hour? What exactly does one second mean and what is it? The old astronomers’ way to measure time was dividing the time it took for the sun to make a trip around the earth… or rather if you subscribe to this Galileo business for the earth to make one revolution. This later proved to be inaccurate because of the changing of days and so the scientists defined a unit of time, a second, to be: the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Caesium 133 atom. And since I just happen to have a Caesium133 atom at home in my mad scientist laboratory, I went ahead and verified it. They were right. But seriously… time is such an interesting concept because no matter if we measure it by the revolutions of the earth or the oscillations of a caesium atom, time doesn’t work by itself. It’s contingent and requires physical matter, the universe around us to exist. We are either masters of it or slaves to it. We are always either late, on time, or early. It always moves forward, never backward (at least not yet). It moves and ticks away one second at a time. Someone once said, “Time is God’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.” How true it is!

We are in the last week of Ordinary Time. Why is it called ordinary time? Because we’ve been counting weeks at a time, 1st week, 2nd week, 3rd week, up until the 34th week, these are ordinal numbers, numbers in order. But further Ordinary Time from the Latin, Tempus per Annum, “time through the year” reflects a time that is not the special seasons of Lent Easter, or Advent, but normal, ordinary. Is this to say that Ordinary Time is boring or without anything special? No, in these last few weeks of Ordinary Time, I don’t know if you caught the hint, but there’s been some serious scary stuff. It is during this time of the year where Jesus is calling the Pharisees hypocrites, the people needing to be prepared for the end, the doom and the gloom. The end of the world!! The world will end one day, you might think you will live forever, but it’s not going to happen. November is a time we pray for the souls in purgatory: all of those we have known and loved and countless others who have died and gone before us. It is the fate of us all and no one, no one is getting out of here alive. This is really depressing and this is supposed to be a solemnity, a Feast day of celebrating Christ the King!!! But all this talk is depressing, the end, death, gloominess how are we supposed to be happy about the end of the world?

Well what do the readings say? The first reading is about King David. King Saul just died and the Israelites are looking for a new King. “Hey David, you did pretty well back there with Goliath and stuff and you were pretty awesome. You led us to victory and we didn’t all die! We want you to be our King.” The verse that stuck to me was this, “And the LORD said to you, ‘You shall shepherd my people Israel and shall be commander of Israel.’” Why? You have to remember that Jesus hasn’t shown up yet on the scene so the talk of shepherd doesn’t quite make any sense. It does make sense to be a commander of Israel: that means power, authority and everything we think a King should have. But David, being a shepherd boy, knew what it meant to be a shepherd. It meant that he was to watch out and protect and raise them with a special care. So for David, who was to be the greatest King of Israel, the Jewish people, he knew he had to rule with authority and power but also have the heart of a shepherd one that does not abuse the power but looks for the lost ones and brings them back to the flock. That sounds like the definition of a good king to me.

What does the Gospel say? Well if I were to guess what the Gospel reading was going to be for Christ the King what do you think I would pick? Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, yes, that was the only time He was treated like a King. But no, today’s reading is sad and depressing. It’s the crucifixion! The Church in her infinite wisdom probably did a Google search for “King” in the Gospel and just picked one that used “king”! But this is the worst example isn’t it? It’s Jesus dying on the Cross! And they put a sign on his cross to mock him! “The King of the Jews!” The other “rulers sneered at Jesus and said, “He saved others, let him save himself!!... If you are King... save yourself.” Everybody was yelling at him and making fun of him, taunting him. I don’t know about you guys, but this is not how I want my King to go out. It’s not how anybody wants their King to go out… their leader mocked, scorned, and defeated. Even the criminal hanging there with him is making fun of him! “Are you not the Christ? (The anointed one, the savior?)” Some savior if you cannot even save yourself, how are you going to save us?! Only one guy stands up for Him, a penitent thief Dismas by tradition, and from there we have the touching words, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” He was the first one to recognize 1) his sins and his deserving of punishment 2) that Jesus Christ was truly a King, the Savior and that He had a Kingdom.

Remembering back to the first reading: a King must be the commander of Israel, a leader of a people with power and authority and a shepherd of the people, feeding, protecting, caring, keeping the flock together and out of danger. Comparing the glory of King David rising to power versus the incredibly sad state of Jesus’ death, King of the Jews and we have an interesting picture for our feast of Christ the King. What does this mean?

St Paul to the Colossians writes, “Jesus is the image of the invisible God...in him all things were created… he is before all things… the head of the body, the Church… the beginning the firstborn from the dead….” These are all the things exclaiming the greatness of Jesus Christ. St Paul really brings it home for us at the last part of the reading, “For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things… making peace by the blood of his cross.”

Christ’s Kingship is on Calvary. His throne, the two wooden beams of the Cross. His crown, a crown of thorns. His scepter, the nails in his hand. This is how our King ruled. He ruled by laying down His life for our sake. He reconciled us by His Blood to the Father; He is our mediator to the Father: “I love my people so much that I will put my life down for them. ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’” This is a King beyond all Kings, one that truly lives for His people by His life and He will not stop saving His people until the end of time. It is then that all will come to fulfillment; we will be with Him in heaven in eternity where there will be no more sadness, only complete joy.

My Sunday school teacher used to ask us all the time: if you die the next day, are you ready to see God, have you prepared yourself? It wasn’t to scare us to death, though it might have scared us about death… it was to remind us that as God’s children we should always have our mind and hearts on Him and be ready to meet Him when He comes or we go to Him. Does this mean that we have a life without fun or joy? No it means our joy rests in Him, He is to be our greatest joy and desire. Look at your friends around you. Which ones have the most joy and which ones are the most miserable? You will see that the ones that live in God’s love will truly radiate God’s joy and happiness look for it in others, imitate it and be examples to each other. The ones that are miserable will only look like they are happy; but they will not be joyful.

Therefore, as we are reminded of Christ passion and death, we also remember that He is doing it because He is our King and because He wants us to be “in Paradise.” (as he promised the good thief) We celebrate the Eucharist so that we can be reminded of this and we do this over and over again so that our minds and hearts are filled with His complete act of Love: reconciling us to the Father with His body and blood. We are creatures, bodies and all, we are His creation; we exist in time and time exists because we do. And if we were to die suddenly, if we did not have this Ordinary Time in the Church year to reflect on Jesus’ wonderful gifts, if we had no time at all, we wouldn’t be able to think about and appreciate fully what God has done? Time is a gift for us to use, it is precious and it should be used to order our lives to God. This takes time and it can’t be done instantly. Remember what I said earlier, "Time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once." Even in the End Times, the Time when Jesus Christ will come again in glory, Christ the King to reign for all time and eternity, we have this precious time to appreciate and remember His Love for us.