This coming Sunday is the celebration of the Solemnity of the Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe – commonly known as Christ the King Sunday. While the formal declaration of the feast only dates to 1925, it origin of the consideration of Christ as King dates back to the patriotic period of the Church appearing in the writings of Cyril of Jerusalem, but is also found in the Gospel of Matthew 28 which Cyril saw as part of his foundation of thought. The celebration, originally placed in October, has an eschatological dimension pointing to the end of time when the kingdom of Jesus will be established in all its fullness to the ends of the earth. It leads into Advent. Attention to the nature of the Advent reading reveals anticipation of the second coming of Jesus. A detailed commentary can be found in Matthew 25:31-46. Continue reading
Christ the King
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A large regional trauma center hospital (more than 1,000 beds) was located within the boundaries of my former parish. The hospital, while having a wonderful chaplain staff, did not have a Catholic priest on the staff and so we priests in the parish took care of the sick and dying, in addition to our usual parish responsibilities. Over the course of more than 13 years assigned to the parish, I easily saw more than 10,000 patients. Most who recovered, some who did not. For those individuals and their families who experienced the great passing on, it was a loss, a sorrow and especially when the young died, a tragedy. 