Today we give honor to the King of
kings—Jesus Christ. On this Feast of Christ the King which signals the end of
the liturgical year, it’s fitting to reflect on how we have given honor to him.
How have we shown allegiance to our King?
It is one thing to profess in words that
Christ is the King; it’s quite another to sincerely order our lives according
to what pleases the King. The former act may well be fulfilled by lip-servicing
as many of us do actually; the latter requires a great deal of trust and surrender
to God’s will. The former may not transform our self-centeredness; the latter
can change our value system and way of life, the will of God being at the center.
Have we allowed Jesus to be truly the King
of our lives? And what might this act of
surrender imply?
In today’s gospel (Jn 18:33-37) Jesus is in
trial in front of Pilate. The exchange between them unfolds the nature of
Jesus’ Kingship. “Are you the king of the Jews?” is the question thrown by
Pilate to Jesus. The answer to which determines whether or not Jesus is guilty
of treason as charged. And Jesus answers obliquely that his “kingdom does not
belong to this world.” This implies of course that indeed he is a king but of a
different order.
All earthly kings rule in the external
public forum--the socio-economic and political affairs-- which is configured by
men and governed by them. No. Jesus is King not of that order. His kingdom does
not rely on military strategies, or on economic systems, or on political power.
Instead, Jesus is king of the internal
forum—the affairs of the heart, the arena of conscience—where the deepest
spiritual strivings and the search for the truth transpire. As such, this arena
is far superior to the former. The allegiance of the heart is immeasurably more
profound than any external public adherence, say, to a political party. Thomas
More, for instance, is remembered by his remarks just before his execution: “I
die as the king’s true servant, but God’s first.”
Ultimately, the interior adherence to Jesus
in faith ought to influence the way we conduct even our external public
affairs. This is why even without military personnel and political machinery,
Jesus’ kingship is radically transformative—the very reason why the revered people
in the corridors of power in his time wanted to get rid of him!
“Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my
voice” (v. 37). This is the statement of our
King. Listening to his voice is how we show our allegiance to him. This means
allowing Jesus to rule the affairs of our hearts and letting his truth
reverberate in every nook and cranny of our conscience. To accept Jesus as
king, then, is to be aware of the interior adherence of faith he demands and to
actually live by it each day.
But how do we grow in this “interior allegiance
of the heart?” How can we truly discern the voice of the King in our lives? Let
me suggest three elements adapted from the thoughts of Fr. Thomas Green, SJ, a
spiritual director and writer:
A
desire to do God’s will. To grow in this interior
allegiance to Christ, we ought to cultivate this desire to do his will and to
let go of our self-centered whims and caprices. We should desire to accomplish
God’s work in our lives. This means that what the Lord wants is more important
to us than what we want. If we honestly do not have this desire to do his will,
how else can we profess that He is our King other than by lip-servicing?
Openness
to God. To genuinely desire God’s will, we must be
open to God as he reveals himself in his mysterious, surprising, and even disturbing
ways. We must be open to be taught and be led the by the Lord. We must let him
be the boss. Isn’t it true that often we approach God with all our
preconceptions of him? And we even place him within the limiting confines of
our expectations! If the Lord’s will matters to us the most, then these limited
and limiting notions of him must give way to openness, letting God be God and
truly our King.
A Knowledge
of God. We can only know what pleases the Lord when
we have known him. This knowledge is not just information about God but our
lived experience of him. If we lack this personal and experiential knowledge of
God, then we need to grow in this by the help of a spiritual guide or the support
of a community who has grown in intimacy with the Lord. Hence, it is essential
that we continue to ask the grace of intimacy with the Lord as it is impossible
to surrender our lives to a King whom we do not know and care about.
We end this liturgical year with this Feast
of Christ the King. Let us strive then, with God’s enabling grace, to listen to
God’s voice in the deepest recesses of our hearts and, guided by it, lead a life
that is truly pleasing to him.
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