The Feast of Christ the King 

Today Holy Mother Church celebrates In Festo Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Regis: Christ the King. Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925 to help correct the world’s tilt toward the chaos of secularism. The Great War (which ended in November 1918) made terrifyingly evident that universal devastation is the price we must pay for casting God out of public life. A few years after this war, and foreseeing the next global war to come, Pius XI wrote the encyclical Quas primas: “These manifold evils in the world are due to the fact that the majority of men have thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; [with] no place either in private affairs or in politics: as long as individuals and states refuse to submit to the rule of our Savior, there will be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations.” Before Christ, the world knew no peace, but on a certain year in human history, the Son of God became incarnate and established his Kingdom. It is at this moment we enter today’s Gospel reading. Jesus Christ faces Pilate. The Roman king of Judea stands in judgment over the eternal King of heaven.

A King faces the King

Pilate was not a bad king, as earthly rulers go. He had nothing against God—he just didn’t know him. He was only trying to keep order in the best way he knew. He was like most political officials in our day—non-Christian, with no recourse to a higher moral authority—for our social order has lapsed into its primitive, non-Christian state. Like Pilate, Christ has nothing to do with our decision-making, and we are trying to maintain peace without God.

Pilate asks Jesus: who are you? Are you a king? Jesus answers Pilate’s question with a question: “Do you say this on your own?” In other words, do you really want to know who I am, and what it means to be a king? Pilate becomes a little frustrated with these deeper questions, which seem like riddles to his crudely political mind: “Do I look like a Jew to you?” he flings back at Jesus. “How am I supposed to know about your weird religion? Just tell me who you are and what you’ve done to cause a riot in my district.”

Pilate Doesn’t Get It

Then Jesus gives Pilate, and all humanity, the answer we have been longing to hear: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Every worldly political order will fail to the degree that it refuses to have reference beyond the world. We can’t keep order by ourselves. What do you think will happen if you put three children in a room by themselves for five hours? They need an adult to keep from hurting each other. We “adults” need a Father greater than any earthly father. Deep down, we all know this, and we know that the answer to our political conflicts is not found in this world.

Jesus continues: “I came to testify to the truth.” Every politically mature person asks whether an earthly ruler ever be completely honest. And Jesus answers that question: No, he can’t. The world is ruined; it is lost to original sin. Only the ruler who is beyond this world can bring peace and order. Only God bears the fullness of truth, and the only way to rule this world is to refer beyond it. Pilate doesn’t get it, and, with all due respect, Barak Obama doesn’t get it. Few rulers have ever understood this; most politicians who call themselves “Catholic” don’t get it, and I’m not sure how much we get it either. It is enormously difficult for anyone in our society, soaked as we are in secularism, to grasp how empty, how frail, how vain is any attempt at a peaceful order divorced from God’s laws.

Are We Taking Earthly Politics Too Seriously?

Many good Catholics complain to me that they struggle with despair over our country. American leadership, and world politics, becomes more anti-Christian, more irrational and chaotic, more dishonest, every day. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and we can’t do anything about it.

But remember this: Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world. So why do we expect order, peace, and honest politics from this world? The world as we know it is passing away. Our hopes are not in this world, but in Jesus Christ, the Lord of a Kingdom not of this world. If we are discouraged by earthly politics, we probably think too much of them. If you never miss the evening news, whether it’s Fox or CNN or NPR, but you do miss your evening family rosary, you are bound to be depressed. But don’t you know that the rosary is far more real than the news? Turn the TV and computer off, and pray the rosary together, and you will gain courage and hope.

Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King to remind us how transitory are this world’s rule. The Lord Jesus Christ reigns over heaven and earth; nothing and nobody can topple him. We put our hope in him, we commit our allegiance to him. With our Lady, we work to bring about his Kingdom in this world, but with our heart set on the Kingdom that is not of this world.

I sent the following post to the LA Times’ as a letter to the editor, but they seem adverse to printing opinions contrary to their editorial views. So I offer it to my devoted readers.

The Sunday Times sported a TNT Television advertisement over its front page that looked just like the front page (complete with Sunday masthead). It promoted the TV series “Falling Skies” with a photo of a dozen men and women marching toward the viewer, each brandishing various kinds of assault weapons. They looked very cool.

The “real” front page (beneath the advertisement) contained a story about Friday’s Santa Monica shootings. It showed a surveillance photo of the killer entering the college library with an assault weapon. He looked not very cool—he had “a history of mental issues,” says the article. It blames the tragedy on access to firearms. So which is it, America? Are guns good or not good? Is shooting up other people cool, or is it not cool? If murder is not cool, then let’s stop promoting movies that make killing look cool, especially to those walking our streets with “a history of mental issues.” 

I write from Lima where I am giving an 8-day retreat to the Missionaries of Charity sisters. Peru has been peaceful for many years. It has not suffered from the drug wars like Mexico and Colombia; neither has it suffered from socialist dictatorships like Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela. Nevertheless, it suffers the poverty of most post-colonial nations, struggling to establish just trade networks with big western corporations that have siphoned off her human and material resources for years. 

The Missionaries of Charity have been given a large school compound in one of Lima’s worst areas, called La Parada. They care for 80 handicapped children, most who had been abandoned at city hospitals. They also care for 30 homeless men. Sr. Sahana, the regional superior, told me yesterday that the Mayor of Lima is always trying to convince the MC’s to relocate to a better part of town. “We will give you a building—just get out of La Parada. We cannot protect you there.” Indeed, last fall the area exploded with riots when the city tried to turn a gigantic open market, overflowing with drugs, garbage, and violence, with a city park. Five people died in the riots, which poisoned the air with din and smoke for a week. The handicapped children cried all night from the violence just outside our walls, and coughed up black phlegm from the acrid smoke of burning tires. The national guard still watches the intersections, riot shields leaning up against their parked armored vehicles. In the midst of this wasteland, the MC Sisters have established an oasis of peace, as they do in all the world’s slums. They lovingly care for the “human garbage” of contemporary society, which simply cannot care for its most vulnerable. I went up to visit the severely disfigured children this morning and saw a glowing joy on their faces, at least those who had even the merest capacity to reason. The homeless men all reach out to clasp my hands with big smiles: “Buenos Dias, Padrecito!” Somebody has given these men a reason to smile again. At all times of the day, between their work, the sisters quietly slip in and out of the chapel to offer their work to Jesus.

But the senseless chaos from outside the walls thumps into this oasis, disturbing at least my peace. Almost every night, from 6pm to 2am, the local drug dealers stage concerts in the streets to cover their business. The noise thuds through the housing blocks while people drink, sell, and take drugs. In the morning, there is usually a terrible mess, sometimes a dead body, in the street. “Sister,” I asked, “how can they get away with that loud music? No one can sleep for blocks around! I was thinking of going out to ask them to turn it down.” The sister’s eyes grew wide, and then she laughed: “Oh no, Father, they would kill you. Nobody can talk to them.”

“But how do you sleep?” I asked (the sisters go to bed around 10pm, and get up at 5am). “Oh,” Sister Catherine Jos smiled, “we are used to it.” I’ve asked this question in many of the MC convents throughout the world. The answer is always the same: “We are missionaries. We are used to it.” Truly missionaries of charity! I marvel at how they maintain tranquility through this infernal din. They bring love, and order, and joy into our self-imposed chaos of rock music, drugs, and violence. They accept crude arrogance as just part of the human condition, and they love everyone despite it all. An absurd self-gratification rocks the peace of our neighborhood every night, but it does not rock the peace in our dear sisters’ heart, or cause the least frown to darken their radiant smiles. I suppose (sigh) I can get used to it as well, at least for a week, and practice a little charity myself.