Jn 18:33b-37
In 1925, in the wake of the horror of the Great War, Pope Pius XI created the Solemnity of Christ the King, which we celebrate this weekend.
In the opening paragraph of the encyclical “Quas Primas,” by which he announced that decision, commenting on the awful experience of the war, he wrote: “These manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that 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 among nations … When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.”
These words might be jarring to contemporary ears, but they convey to us an absolutely certain and necessary truth. It may be the case that Christ’s kingdom is spiritual and “not of this world.” It may be true that we must carry out our civic duty responsibly and carefully in the context of the place divine providence has given us in history, in our case, modern, democratic, American society. Nevertheless, it also remains true that in the end, only Christ is King, and there is absolutely nothing on earth that falls outside of his rightful rule, whether individual hearts, households, or nations. Every human heart was made to find its place in the Lord who created and saved it, and it remains true that there is no real peace outside of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Indeed, all nations are temporary, and even as we follow God’s command to work fervently to preserve the one in which we dwell, we do so remembering that the only lasting nation is Christ’s Kingdom.
There, Christ is King by right of nature, since he is the Almighty God, and it is his very self that determines the contours of our own natures, and indeed, of all truth. Christ is King by right of conquest, since by his triumph on the cross he conquered the devil, our enslaver. And of course, Christ is King by right of love, for he loves each of us individually, more than any candidate or politician ever has or could, even if they were inclined to, and indeed more than we love our own selves. We might be permitted to choose lesser evils on occasion when picking leaders from among our merely coequal brothers and sisters, but there is only good to be found in Christ’s healing and compassionate authority.
This truth, that reality itself is a monarchy beneath the loving and gentle rule of Christ the Good King, should make Christians a constant witness against the ambitions of any nation or government to total authority. Acceptance of the absolute kingship of Christ is the source of our unbreakable liberty, which we preserve even as we cooperate where possible with earthly authorities. Our liberty is unconquered because it is not founded on any document or philosophical assertion, but on Christ’s own unchanging dominion. To lose sight of this as Christians, to lock our hearts away in lonely independence, or to submit our hearts and minds totally to any leader, movement, cause, or ideology here in time, would be to lose the only lasting freedom there is, and to find ourselves progressively enslaved to a world that is already passing away. We have something far greater. Long live Christ the King.
Fr. Rampino is studying at the Catholic University in Washington with residence at Blessed Sacrament Church in Alexandria.
Corpus Christi