“¡Viva Cristo Rey!” – “Long Live Christ the King!”
We are rapidly approaching the end of the Church’s current liturgical year which began with the First Sunday of Advent on November 27, 2022. On this last Sunday of Ordinary Time, we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. Despite its significance, this feast can easily escape the attention of many American Catholics, falling as it does so close to Thanksgiving and the start of Advent.The feast was not always celebrated on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. When Pope Pius XI established the feast, he set it for the last Sunday in October, but subsequent revisions in the Roman Calendar moved it to its present location. The encyclical he issued in 1925 establishing the feast, Quas Primas, makes clear his intent. He wanted to warn the world that all civil leaders derived their authority from Jesus Christ and were subject to him: “Nations will be reminded by the annual celebration of this feast that not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ.”
Pope Pius XI was writing in the midst of what he called the “Terrible Triangle.” By that he meant atheistic Communism’s brutal persecution of the Church in Russia, Mexico, and Spain. The Pope blamed the “manifold evils in the world” on the deliberate rejection by “the majority of men” of “Jesus Christ and his holy law,” adding that the world had attempted to live as if our Lord’s law “had no place either in private affairs or in politics.” To the Holy Father, “as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace.” Things cannot be said to have improved concerning the acknowledgment—or lack thereof—by civil rulers of the authority of Jesus Christ.
Today the Church has added an eschatological sense to this Solemnity to call our attention—and that of all people—to the Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven, hell. In the Creed we profess together each week, we make this statement of faith about Christ the King: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.” The Gospel account the Church provides for our hearing this Sunday is that of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46): “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations (that means all of us!) will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats…”
Without a doubt, we are responsible for the choices we make during our life on this earth, the good we do as well as the good we have seen yet failed to do. Christ the King, our merciful yet just judge, will recognize and confirm the choices we have made in our lives and will reward us accordingly. The whole Gospel of Christ, especially the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, serve as the measuring rod for how we have lived our lives on earth and what our eternal destiny will be.
It is a happy coincidence that around the Solemnity of Christ the King each year, the Church also celebrates Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro. He was a Jesuit priest in Mexico during the time of great persecution of the Catholic Church in that country during the first half of the 20th century. He was executed by firing squad after he was falsely charged with the bombing and attempted assassination of former Mexican President Álvaro Obregón and died as a martyr for the faith on November 23, 1927 at the age of 36 in Mexico City. In 1988 he was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II and his feast day assigned to November 23 each year. Blessed Miguel Pro died with his arms extended in the sign of the cross and with the words, “Viva Cristo Rey!” on his lips, “Long Live Christ the King!”
May our lives of lived faith pay the same homage to Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe!
With the Church we pray: “Almighty ever-living God, whose will is to restore all things in your beloved Son, the King of the universe, grant, we pray, that the whole creation, set free from slavery, may render your majesty service and ceaselessly proclaim your praise. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.” (Collect from the Roman Missal for today’s Solemnity)
With a brother’s love in the Lord and Mary Immaculate,