Christ The King

St Paul will implore us again and again to understand that Jesus the Christ, is he image of the Father.  Preparing for my homily today I found a quote by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, an  Abbot and reformer of the Cistercians, in which he muses about the difficulty to avoid Sin and Evil.  Bernard states quite clearly that greed, ambition, bodily pleasures, and, envy, are always pulling at him.  All the more reason, St. Bernard says, to be connected to Christ.  We allow his mission and ministry to inspire and inform our lives.

Fr. Robert Barron commented in one of his CDs that his students are always amazed at the Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, who will fast for days, undergo all sorts of physical discomfort, and walk miles on pilgrimage.  Fr Barron remarks hat we as Catholics have a hard  time making Mass for an hour once a week.  Even More so, we are called to engage the world with charity, justice and peace.  That old familiar song, "They will know we are Christians by our love,"  needs to be our theme song.

The other week I had a family from my former parish visit me.  They had commented how welcomed everyone made them feel.  That is a wonderful commentary about this parish community; but that should be the norm and not the exception.  One of the first rules of the Benedictines is to welcome everyone as if were Christ himself.  The Kingship of Christ demands that we be servant leaders.  As we follow the faithfulness of Jesus through the Paschal mystery, we enable others to journey along with us on the way. 

There is a great Celtic story entitled "The Fisher King."  There are various versions but all speak about turning our ideas of kingship, power, and authority upside down:

Story of the Fisher King, The
by: Richard LaGravenese, The Fisher King It begins with the king as a boy, having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he can become king. Now while he is spending the night alone he's visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire appears the holy grail, symbol of God's divine grace. And a voice said to the boy, "You shall be keeper of the grail so that it may heal the hearts of men." But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty. And in this state of radical amazement he felt for a brief moment not like a boy, but invincible, like God,
... so he reached into the fire to take the grail,
... and the grail vanished,
... leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded. Now as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper. Until one day, life for him lost its reason. ... He had no faith in any man, not even himself.
... He couldn't love or feel loved.
... He was sick with experience.
He began to die. One day a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple minded, he didn't see a king. He only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king, "What ails you friend?" The king replied, "I'm thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat". So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, filled it with water and handed it to the king. As the king began to drink, he realized his wound was healed. He looked in his hands and there was the holy grail, that which he sought all of his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement, "How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?" And the fool replied, "I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty." 

In Matthew 25 Jesus indicates that we receive the Kingdom of God based on some very basic Gospel values.  Conversion and discipleship lead the way to works of mercy and charity.  Jesus ruled sitting in the dirt next to the poor and sinner, by touching the leprous, and dying on a cross.  This is what Chris the King is all about.