“Since the close of the Great War,” wrote Pope Pius XI in 1922, “individuals, the different classes of society, the nations of the earth have not as yet found true peace.” Four years after the end of a conflict that killed as many as 15 million people, humanity still did not “enjoy… that active and fruitful tranquillity which is the aspiration and the need of mankind.”
With four once-great empires also dead and buried after 1918, the leader of the world’s largest Christian church emphasized that such tranquillity required a different kind of government: “the true peace of Christ can only exist in the Kingdom of Christ… in doing all we can to bring about the re-establishment of Christ's kingdom, we will be working most effectively toward a lasting world peace.” So in 1925 Pius XI added a new celebration to the liturgical calendar: the Feast of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ the King Sunday is, in effect, the New Year’s Eve of the Christian year1: the triumphant culmination of ordinary time before we start all over by renewing the expectation of Advent. So I’ve often found it a good match to the more secular celebrations of Thanksgiving: a time to express our gratitude for the ways, large and small, that we can see the reign of Christ extending into our lives and our world.
One way in particular. Precisely because the feast originated in the aftermath of a terrible conflict, we should remember that Christ’s kingdom is inseparable from his ministry of love and reconciliation. At least, the Apostle Paul seemed to think so.
Give thanks, he tells the recipients of this week’s epistle, to the Father who “has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:13).
Not only is Christ the King “the firstborn of all creation,” but “all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (vv 15-17). And while the beautiful coherence of creation had been obscured by the ugly separation of sin, God was restoring his intended unity through the sacrifice of a King crowned with thorns: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (v 20).
That reconciliation is happening on a cosmic scale — Christ is Sovereign over every square inch of creation, as one Calvinist famously put it. But it starts with those of us called out of a still-violent, not-so-tranquil world to gather together on mornings like this one. For Christ the King is also “the head of the body, the church” (v 18), that imperfect assembly of flawed people who “were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds” but now stand together “reconciled in his fleshly body through death” (vv 21-22).
So this Sunday, let us celebrate the reign that restores relationships; let us worship the king whose law is love, whose power brings peace.
Next week’s lectionary readings: Psalm 122; Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44; Romans 13:11-14.
Originally, the feast was scheduled for the end of October. It moved to the last Sunday before Advent in 1969.