The Solemnity of Christ the King stands as the Church’s annual proclamation of a sovereignty that confounds all earthly power. We celebrate a King whose throne was a cross, whose crown was woven from thorns, whose royal proclamation was “It is finished.” This paradox, i.e., that divine kingship reveals itself most fully in complete self-emptying, lies at the very heart of Carmelite spirituality and its distinctive call to surrender. When Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (Lk 23:3) he expected either a revolutionary’s defiance or a prisoner’s desperate denial. Instead, Christ offered something entirely different: “My kingdom is not of this world.” This response has echoed through two millennia, challenging every human conception of power, authority and rulership. Christ’s kingship operates on a different level and according to a different logic – the logic of kenosis, of self-emptying love that conquers through vulnerability rather than force. The crowds who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with palm branches expected a messiah who would overthrow Roman occupation and restore Israel’s political glory. They got instead a King who washed his disciples’ feet, who allowed himself to be arrested without resistance, who forgave his executioners from the cross. His kingdom is established not through coercion but through invitation, not through domination but through loving surrender to the Father’s will.
This understanding of kingship as surrender rather than grasping, as service rather than dominion, becomes the pattern for all Christian discipleship. In the Carmelite tradition, the poverty and hiddenness of Christ’s reign become not merely doctrines to affirm but a way of life to embody. The Carmelite path is marked by a radical detachment that mirrors Christ’s own self-emptying. St John of the Cross captured this perfectly in his famous sketch of the ascent of Mount Carmel, inscribed with the words: “Nothing, nothing, nothing, and even on the mount, nothing.” To be filled with God, we must first be emptied of everything that is not God. St Teresa of Ávila understood that true spiritual poverty means relinquishing not just material possessions but our very attachment to spiritual consolations, to certainty about our progress, to the image we project even to ourselves. She writes in The Interior Castle of those advanced souls who must learn to embrace spiritual dryness, darkness and apparent absence of God – not despite their love, but precisely because of it. This is surrender in its purest form: continuing to love and trust when every feeling contradicts faith. The Carmelite vow of poverty thus extends far beyond economic simplicity. It encompasses a poverty of spirit that leaves us defenceless before God, stripped of our carefully constructed identities, our spiritual achievements, our plans for holiness. We surrender our very sovereignty over ourselves, recognizing that Christ’s kingship means our abdication, not as slaves cowering before a tyrant, but as beloved children resting entirely in the Father’s providential care.
Perhaps nowhere is the connection between Christ’s kingship and Carmelite surrender more evident than in St John of the Cross’s doctrine of the dark night. These purifying experiences, whether of sense or spirit, strip away our illusions about ourselves and about God. They are painful precisely because they require us to surrender our comfortable ideas of how relationship with God should feel, how prayer should progress, how holiness should appear. In the dark night, God asserts His kingship by dethroning all the false gods we have erected: our spiritual pride, our attachment to consolations, our hidden bargains with the divine. We discover that we cannot manipulate God through techniques or earn His love through achievements. We can only surrender into the darkness, trusting that Christ who descended into the tomb and harrowed hell knows these depths intimately and meets us there. This is Christ’s kingship as Carmelites experience it; as the hidden sovereignty of One who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” His rule in our lives strengthens through detachment, through nights that seem endless, through an ongoing crucifixion of the false self. Yet paradoxically, it is precisely in this surrender that we discover true freedom and authentic identity.
St Thérèse of Lisieux demonstrated that this path of surrender need not be dramatic or extraordinary. Her “little way” reveals that Christ’s kingship can be acknowledged in the smallest acts of charity, the most hidden sacrifices, the quiet acceptance of daily difficulties. She understood that spiritual childhood, which is defined by radical dependence on God, is simply another name for total surrender to divine sovereignty. Thérèse teaches that we honour Christ as King not primarily through great deeds but through allowing Him to reign in the ordinary moments of life. Every frustration accepted without complaint, every act of love offered without recognition, every instance of choosing God’s will over our preferences, are the ways we bend the knee before our sovereign Lord.
As we move from the celebration of Christ the King toward Advent, we are invited to contemplate this mystery: our sovereign Lord chose to enter the world as the most vulnerable of creatures – a newborn infant whose first royal proclamation was a cry of need. This is the God who cries, the King who comes in poverty and weakness, who from the manger to the cross reveals that divine power perfects itself in human vulnerability. This Advent, the Carmelite Priory at Boars Hill, Oxford, invites you to explore this profound mystery more deeply through a retreat entitled “The God Who Cries”, based on the Romances of St. John of the Cross. From December 12-14, we will delve into John’s poetic meditations on the Incarnation, discovering how the eternal Word’s descent into human flesh models the path of surrender we are all called to walk.
As we prepare our hearts for Christmas, let us embrace the Carmelite call to surrender, recognising in the crying infant of Bethlehem, our true King; the One whose weakness is stronger than human strength, whose poverty enriches the world, whose kingship consists in self-emptying love. May we learn to surrender as completely as He did, trusting that only in losing ourselves do we truly find ourselves in Him.
Click here to learn more about the retreat “The God Who Cries”.