The Feast of Christ the King which we celebrate this weekend was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 to celebrate the Jubilee Year. He desired to reassert the sovereignty of Christ and His Church over all forms of government and to remind Christians of the fidelity they owed to Christ, who by His Incarnation and death on the Cross made them both adopted children of God and future citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Christ is our King and Ruler who rules by truth and love. He is a King with a saving and liberating mission: freeing us from all types of bondage, enabling us to live peacefully and happily on earth, and promising us an inheritance in the eternal life of heaven.
What is the Kingdom of God? What is the Kingdom of Christ the King? One Catholic theologian writes, “The Kingdom of God is a space. It exists in every home where parents and children love each other. It exists in every region and country that cares for its weak and vulnerable. It exists in every parish that reaches out to the needy. The Kingdom of God is a time. It happens whenever someone feeds a hungry person, or shelters a homeless person, or shows care to a neglected person. It happens whenever we overturn an unjust law, or correct an injustice, or avert a war. It happens whenever people join in the struggle to overcome poverty, to erase ignorance, to pass on the Faith. The Kingdom of God is in the past (in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth); it is in the present (in the work of the Church and in the efforts of many others to create a world of goodness and justice); it is in the future (reaching its completion in the age to come). The Kingdom of God is a condition. Its symptoms are love, justice, and peace.”
To celebrate the Kingship of Christ this weekend well, we all must recommit to becoming his loyal and faithful subjects by listening to him, loving him, serving him, and following him. We belong fully to His Kingdom when the truths of the Gospel penetrate every facet of our living. By doing so we show the world that He is indeed our King.