The Feast of Christ the King: Long Live the King

If the year 2020 has taught us anything, it is that we should take nothing for granted. As our liturgical year draws to a close, we have no assurances that things are going to get better. And yet the Church ends the year on a high note, the Feast of Christ the King, a “crowning glory upon the mysteries of the life of Christ already commemorated during the year” (Quas Primus 29). Despite the sense of powerlessness that has beleaguered us in the form of closed borders and quarantine laws, we are supposed to rejoice in Our Lord’s legislative, judicial, and executive power, and “fight courageously under the banner of Christ”. (QP14 & 24)

This feast was not, however, always the last of the year, and the name was not always the Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe. The Feast of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ was instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI and decreed as the last Sunday in October, so that we might “bring forth Jesus from his silent hiding-place in the church, and carry him in triumph through the streets of the city”, befitting His status as King. Pope Pius XI chose to celebrate this feast for the first time on the 31^st of October 1926, the day before “the triumph of all the saints” (QP29) and most notably Reformation Sunday. It was designed to counter “the plague of anti-clericalism”; and, as with all the Church’s major feasts, it was meant to “have a salutary effect upon the whole of man’s nature”. (QP21)

The readings for this feast have also altered. The Gospel (John 18:33-37) used to end with the words: “…for this I came into the world, that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth My voice”. The new Gospel reading (Matthew 25:31-46) is just as relevant to the kingship of Christ, but as an historian I am always asking myself what the Holy Spirit can teach us through the history of the development of our Church traditions. Here and now, at a time when truth seems to be particularly obscured, those words of Our Lord about testifying to the truth and of Pope Pius XI urging us to unveil Him and to literally carry Him about publicly are powerful and confronting.

One famous figure who embraced the challenge of this feast day was Blessed Aloysius Stepinac. After his country was invaded by Nazi troops and placed in the control of a quisling government, his sermons were transcribed and circulated by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. In addition to assisting Jews, he used the Feast of the Kingship of Christ repeatedly throughout the war to take particular aim at racist ideologies. His affirmation of “one (human) race” led to him being described by the Germans as a “traitor” who should be “eliminated”. His reminders that all people, whether “white or black… must serve God according to the norms of the divine natural and positive law, written in the hearts and in the souls of men” earned him the animosity of the Ustasha leader who repeatedly humiliated him and called him an “ass”.

Stepinac took up the Gospel message of testimony and condemned “every injustice and every violence committed in the name of the theories of class, race, or nationality”, saying that “the Church stands with an unruffled brow and a clear conscience before every just court, even the court of the future”. That he did so in circumstances that make our own woes pale into insignificance should give us pause for thought. What was it about the kingship of Christ that gave Blessed Aloysius Stepinac the courage to speak boldly, rescue Jews, and pray for his persecutors? I think his answer would be what he stated from the pulpit on that feast day in 1943: “Because the least human being, whatever his name, to whatever race or nation he belongs, carries upon himself the imprint of the living God, an immortal soul.”

The Gospel for the Feast of Christ the King that we will hear in 2020 will end with the words: “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Perhaps, by looking back into the past, those words will pierce our hearts and we will remember that Christ is King not just of the faithful but of the unfaithful too. “Let everyone be conscious of his dignity as man! Let him be conscious of his royal vocation as a child of God….”

So, as we farewell the peculiar year 2020, we have every reason to breathe a sigh of relief and smile at the knowledge that God’s kingdom is our kingdom. It cannot be subject to any external power and it shall have no end. But instead of keeping this knowledge smugly to ourselves, we are duty bound to celebrate Jesus’s kingship in the public sphere. The way we worship is the testimony of what we believe.