Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Dominica D.N. Iesu Christi Regis
23 November 2025

 The Church’s liturgical year comes to a close this week with this final Sunday before a new Church year and the new liturgical season of Advent begins next Sunday.  In recent decades this final Sunday of the year is called the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, commonly referred to as the Solemnity of Christ the King.  The liturgical celebration of the kingship of Christ is rather recent in Church history, coming about when Pope Pius XI established this solemnity in 1925.

 Now, popes don’t just randomly decide and decree things without some reason.  There is some context, some need to which they are responding when they teach.  In the case of this liturgical solemnity, the Pope decreed this observance when the world, especially Europe, was dealing with the fallout from World War I.  The world was devastated by that war.  There were some estimated 30 million military casualties and an estimated 8 million civilian casualties from war-related causes and genocide.  Troubling and godless political movements and ideologies were also on the march across Europe.  Lives were devastated, society was splintered by divisions, and peace had been torn apart.

 Pope Pius XI wrote, The “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. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ; …. it seemed to Us that peace could not be more effectually restored nor fixed upon a firmer basis than through the restoration of the Empire of Our Lord” (Pius XI, Encyclical Quas Primas, On the Feast of Christ the King, December 11, 1925, n.1; emphasis added).

As disciples of the Lord and as members of his Church we observe the kingship of Christ not only liturgically, but most fully by striving for deeper conversion, repentance from sin, and by submission to the reign of Christ, so as to live a life of greater holiness, in other words recognizing that the kingdom of Christ is to be within us.  To speak of living holy lives really means that we are living here and now as members of the kingdom of Christ while we await full arrival in that kingdom at the Lord’s Second Coming.

We live in a fallen world and we live in an age that is marked by curious parodies of divine truth, by which I mean secular ideals and movements that parody salvation history.  I have a theory that I have not had time to develop that in our fallen world due to the dominion of the evil one, the truths of the faith and the events of salvation history are mirrored in this world, but twisted or inverted so as to be a parody of salvation history.  At the risk of offending, though it is not my intention, one such parody of a social movement happening in the general time that we catholics are observing the kingship of Christ is the “No Kings” movement, which just might plant in people’s minds attitudes that could risk being transferred into one’s faith life, such that a person might reject the serious call to submit oneself to Christ and his reign, rejecting Christ as King.  It might be thoroughly American to say that our form of government is not a monarchy, but it would be thoroughly unchristian and would be a risk to salvation were one to reject that Christ is King, that he is my King, and that he must reign in my mind, in my heart, and in my actions.

The Scriptures reveal that the Lord Jesus is the promised king in the line of David.  Our first reading today shows David solidifying kingship of the tribes of Israel in the northern kingdom together with the tribes of the southern kingdom.  David made a covenant with the tribes and, the first reading told us, “they anointed him king.”  In the ancient world, a person became king by being anointed.  That actually still happens today.  Thus, when Jesus is referred to as the Christ, meaning the anointed one, there is a fulfillment of the promised king whose kingship would be firm and whose kingdom would never end.  Ironically enough, as we see in the gospel passage, Jesus is referred to as the Christ, the anointed one, while he hangs on the Cross.  He reigns in an entirely different way.  His throne is the Cross.  By this we learn that Jesus is a king, but he is not an earthly king.  He does have a kingdom, but it is not an earthly kingdom.

As we celebrate the kingship of Christ, we are called to recognize that by faith and baptism we have been incorporated into the kingdom of Christ.  Yes, we are still awaiting its fulfillment in the life to come since his kingship is not limited to this earth or this life.  But we participate in the kingship of Christ now by submitting to his commands, his call to sacrificial and self-giving love, and by conforming ourselves more deeply to the moral life.  By submitting to Christ now we gradually undo the rebellion of sin in ourselves and we foster an order in our life and in our world that will promote true flourishing and the possibility of greater peace.  By professing Christ Jesus to be our King and by professing his dominion over the whole universe and over our very selves, we find that we are submitting ourselves to the one who has submitted himself to us and who, for our salvation, has mounted the throne of the Cross.  We come here to experience the saving mystery of the cross at Holy Mass where we, sinful thieves that we are, look upon the Lord and say in humility, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  May we train our minds and our hearts to hear his royal decree, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”