Reflection

 CHRIST THE KING

On Monday November 25, Catholic parishes celebrates the Feast of Christ the King.

The Feast of Christ the King always raises a critical question:

What does it mean to call Christ a King? What kind of King is he?

What are we really celebrating?

It should be immediately obvious that Christ is not a king in the way we usually think of kings. He is a king who acts more like a servant; he is a king who welcomes the poor and the outcast.

As the preface for the Feast puts it: His kingdom is

“a kingdom of truth and life; a kingdom of holiness and grace; a kingdom of justice, love and peace.”

This feast, then, is not a time for triumphalism, but a time to re- commit ourselves to fostering the kind of kingdom that Christ desires. If we do take the gospel challenge seriously, let us not think of what we are doing as charity. Let us realise that we are merely beginning to meet the demands of justice; a justice by which we accept to live when we agree to love tenderly and walk in truth with God.