Allegiance of the Heart (Christ the King B)

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.

Love and Imperfections (All Soul’s Day)

Valentino, my dad, was a good man. He was well known in our town for his availability to serve people in many and varied ways. He was the town's jack-of-all-trades. And he was really good at fixing a lot of things. A Jesuit priest fondly called him “MacGyver” after a TV series character who possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of the physical sciences and solves complex problems with everyday materials he finds at hand. When there was drought in our place, my dad fixed his tractor and with a trailer he would fetch water from a source and deliver some to those who badly needed it. He was everyone's friend, even the kids. He had a heart for the poor; many times, out of compassion, he would secretly give away the medicines from my mother's pharmacy. He was not as religious as many of us, but he trusted in God and feared Him. Later in his life, he devoted some of his time reading the Bible. In no time, he read it from cover to cover! 

But he had his flaws too. He could be impatient and could allow his temper to get the better of him. When he was in the throes of his anger, he could hurt his loved ones with his scathing words. He would not listen and could be unrelenting when he felt he was right.

In short, my father was a good man. But like everyone else, he was not perfect.  He had his share of human faults and weaknesses. Today, on All Soul’s Day, I remember him in a very special way. And I thank God for this day of grace. In a way, the message of today’s feast is that despite our imperfections God’s grace continues to draw everyone to his love.  The Good News we are proclaiming today is that God loves us warts and all and that the love of God does not forsake our departed brothers and sisters even when they somehow failed to measure up to the ideals of Christian perfection.

Some Christians refuse to accept the Catholic teaching on purgatory—because the word does not appear in the Bible! Let us not be trapped in fundamentalism.  The teaching on purgatory is a comforting doctrine and perfectly consistent with the biblical message of God’s mercy and love.  As Catholics we speak of Purgatory as a state of being in which the faithful departed undergo the process of purification, purging away the imperfections and some selfish tendencies due to sin that hinder them from completely embracing God. In this process of purification, the benevolent God responds to the prayers of many to receive all his beloved children into his heavenly banquet.

It is with this belief that we offer our prayers and the celebration of the holy sacrifice of the Mass for our departed loved ones. This practice of praying for the dead has been done already by the early Christians. In his essay on this particular feast, Fr. Eugene Lobo S.J. has this to say: “Tradition tells us that Christians have always been praying for their departed brothers and sisters to remain in communion with them. Early liturgies and inscriptions on catacomb walls attest to the ancientness of prayers for the dead, even if the Church needed more time to develop a substantial theology behind this practice. Praying for the dead is actually borrowed from Judaism, as indicated in the second book of Maccabees.  In the New Testament, St Paul prays for his departed friend Onesiphorus to receive divine mercy as we read in second Timothy. Early Christian writers Tertullian and St. Cyprian testify to the regular practice of praying for the souls of the departed. Tertullian justified the practice based on custom and Tradition, and not on explicit scriptural teaching. The Christians always believed that their prayers could somehow have a positive effect on the souls of departed believers.”

The Benedictine communities during the 6th century held commemorations for the departed on the feast of Pentecost. Later in the year 998, All Souls’ Day became a universal festival because of the influence of Odilo of Cluny who commanded its annual celebration in the Benedictine houses of his congregation. This practice soon spread to the Carthusian congregations as well.   Today all Western Catholics celebrate All Souls’ Day on November 2.

Today, as we join billions of our brothers and sisters in the faith in prayers for the faithful departed, we thank God for the assurance that His love always awaits them our departed loved ones. We thank God for his love and mercy. Today’s celebration is also a reminder for us who are still on our pilgrimage that God offers his love and  awaits our total and complete response.  While on earth, as a pilgrim Church, God invites us to love him and the quality of our response to that love will have significant relevance on Judgment day.

Our gospel reading today (Mt. 25:31-46) reveals to us the standard by which we shall be judged on that day. To those who have proven their love of God by loving and serving the least of our brothers and sisters, the Kingdom of heaven awaits. “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me” (v.34-36). We do all these acts of love and mercy for God whenever we do these for one of our least brothers and sisters.

God loves us and He invites us to respond to him in love. Yes, we are not perfect but, with God's grace, we can grow towards maturity and perfection as we love God through the least of our neighbors. Let us continue to pray for another and for our departed brothers and sisters. Our prayers testify to our faith in the power of God's grace. It is God's grace that allows us to grow in perfection so that we may all deserve to come to see Him face to face in the heavenly banquet.