V/ I will turn to you O God,
R/ to God who gives joy to my youth
V/ Give me the Wisdom that sits by your throne;
R/ that I may be counted among your children
Lord, in your all-providential plan, you have led me to this moment to rediscover me in your Word and Wisdom. Aid me to make this time of meditation and prayer enriching, transforming, and liberating for my well-being and others. Amen!
CHRIST, OUR KING?
By John Dalla Costa
SOLEMNITY OF CHRIST THE KING
2 Samuel 5:1-3; Psalm 121(122): 1-5; Colossians 1:12-20; Luke 23:35-43
23rd November 2025
With today’s Gospel, the Church proclaims the kingship of Christ not from His resurrection, but from His exchange with one of the guilty thieves on the cross. The Church reminds us that the crown of glory cannot be disentangled from the crown of thorns. That it took a guilty criminal to perceive the royalty of Christ, which His apostles had missed, reminds us to gaze, even now, at the vulnerability of Jesus, not His triumph. On this despicable throne of the cross, suffering wounds, ridicule and taunts, Jesus exercised the kenotic power of love. Hence the unspeakable majesty of the deposition.
Jesus being acclaimed king on the cross is not to suggest it was a title He earned. Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus includes at least fifteen kings. Some, like David, were brave, if also flawed by lust and ambition; in a genetic pool with many more moments of sin, failure and betrayal than enlightenment. Yet this is the evangelist’s point: to show that Jesus, as Messiah, purifies all of human experience, including sin. With the Incarnation, ultimate power is made subject to the service of the people.
We may think this proclamation of kingship is ironic, or that it marks a spiritual rather than temporal enthronement. In fact, acknowledging Christ as King is a practical necessity because it provides the order based on love which nurtures true human fulfilment and social harmony. A ruler by definition sets the rules, providing authority for the ethics, values and behaviours that govern relationships and ensure our personal freedom. Without this order, chaos erupts, ensnaring us in fears which harden all too easily into hateful suspicions. Without this order, we lose our identity as a people, succumbing to the physical and spiritual affliction of loneliness.
Christ the King is not just a feast, but a way of life. St Teresa of Ávila made this royal ordering the key feature of a soul’s journey. Referring to the “interior castle,” she identified the soul as a fortress, the king’s dwelling place. For St Teresa, it is this royal presence that hosts us sumptuously in the castle’s mansions and beckons us with a royal embrace into the throne room of mystical union. While this castle imagery is of her time, St Teresa’s insight was wholly prophetic: she anticipated the Second Vatican Council’s retrieval of baptism as full participation in Christ’s living prophecy, holy priesthood, and beneficent kingship.
Do we believe this is possible? Do we order our lives in fealty to Christ? Do we use our gifts as the royal sisters and brothers of Christ the King to build the reign of God’s justice and peace? These are urgent questions, especially when we reflect on why Pope Pius XI promulgated the feast of Christ the King a century ago. The world and Church in 1925 were in an agony not unlike ours. Political divisions were stark. Hateful ideologies, such as fascism and Nazism, were advancing, producing deadly rivalries between nations, as well as oppression and violence within them. Misinformation was rampant, fanning fears and accelerating what proved to be a self-defeating momentum for military rearmament.
In that moment of existential foreboding, Pope Pius pointed out that global society and Christian cultures had replaced Christ’s framework for peace with conceptions of power based on intimidation and violence. He proclaimed Christ the King, not as an ideal, but as a remedy—not as a pie-in-the-sky alternative to the dictatorships of fear, but as the only practical antidote to the contagion of viciousness.
Before Christ’s reign changes the world, it must, as St Teresa suggested, change our own hearts. Honouring Christ the King thus incites each of us to do our indispensable part in making real and fruitful the reign of God.
Daily Offering
Lord Jesus, you were acclaimed King by a thief who saw majesty in your suffering and royalty in your rejection. Help me to recognise your throne in the unexpected places of my life: in my own vulnerability, in the wounds of others, and in the quiet power of forgiveness. Grant me the grace to reject the world’s dictatorships of fear and to order my inner life—my “interior castle”—in fealty to you. May your love be the rule that governs my heart, so that I may use the gifts of my baptism to build your kingdom, which begins not in worldly triumph, but in the embrace of the cross. Amen.
Questions for reflection:
• The guilty criminal, not an apostle, saw the reign of Christ. Am I able to gaze at the “vulnerability of Jesus,” or am I only looking for His triumph?
• How do I feel about my own flawed history and genetic pool? Can I believe that Christ’s royal presence is at work even there, redeeming and purifying my failures?
• Is Christ the true ordering principle of my inner life, or do I allow fear, ambition, or chaos to rule?
• In what specific, practical way can I use my “royal” dignity from baptism this week to be an antidote to the “contagion of viciousness” or fear I see in my community or online?
Suggested Exercise for the Week:
Identify one relationship or situation in your life (at work, at home, or in your community) where your default reaction is to control, intimidate, or use fear to get a desired outcome. This week, consciously choose to act as a “royal brother/sister of Christ” in that specific situation. Replace the impulse for control with one act of service, or vulnerable love, offering it as your small part in “making real and fruitful the reign of Christ” in all hearts.
Commit to Heart: “Christ the King is not just a feast, but a way of life.”