Fr Henry O’Shea:
Abroad the royal banners fly,
now shines the Cross’s mystery:
upon it Life did death endure,
and yet by death did life procure.
These lines are taken from one of the most beautiful hymns of the liturgy, the Vexilla Regis or The Banners of the King. This hymn is sung during the monks’ evening prayer in the last two weeks of Lent. Sung in Latin to a plaintive, haunting, melody, the hymn reaches a dramatic climax in the lines,
Hail Cross, of hopes the most sublime, Now and in the end of time…
The monks kneel in their places for these lines.
The fact that the hymn is sung in the run-up to the three days of Easter underlines the reality that Easter is the main feast of Christ the King, the great feast from which all others flow, the great feast from which all others get their meaning.
Why then, do we celebrate another feast of Christ the King as the Church’s year enters its last week?
When we think about it at all, we probably consider monarchy a thing of the past. Here in Europe, the surviving monarchies – with the exception of the Vatican – are constitutional monarchies, essentially ceremonial and toothless. But the reality of monarchy remains, and not only in the absolute or quasi-absolute monarchies of which there still are several in the world. Actual, effective monarchy, even if not officially so designated, flourishes in what are and have ever been the predatory empires that have always existed and are, once more, unblushingly, showing their teeth and their grasping winner-takes-all claws.
Nor do contemporary empires always have to be official states. Global corporations are frequently limitless in their resources and untrammelled in their exploitative, imperialistic, greed and ruthlessness.
It is true that from at least the fourth century, it was usual to refer to Christ as King/Rex and even Emperor/Imperator. But today’s feast of Christ the King is a very modern feast. To understand its origin, we need to cast our minds back to 1925. In that year, it seemed to the Pope of the time, Pius XI, that in the face of three ideologies or political and economic systems, it was necessary to remind the world of where true and ultimate power lay, of where true and ultimate power lies.
Remember that in 1925, the Fascist regime in Italy, though only three years in power, was revealing its true colours. Hitler’s perfection of the fascist model was still eight years in the future. In 1925, it looked as if uncontrolled capitalism of the American variety with its adoration of the golden calf of individual greed and socially irresponsible accumulation was going to sweep all before it – at least outside the Soviet Union.
This was only four years before the crash of 1929 caused the sobering cold shower of the Great Depression. In 1925, the Soviet Union was getting into its godless stride. To some naive commentators in the West and elsewhere, it was the future that was already working. Think of George Bernard Shaw. In the end, the Soviet vision of a humanly perfectible humanity would lead, until its collapse in 1989, to the death of an estimated 65 million individual human beings in that empire alone. And this is a conservative estimate.
Even if Pius XI was still bound by the language of monarchy and proposed Christ as the King of the Universe, his insight into the potential and ultimately realized disasters of the three ideologies we have just mentioned was prophetic. And, since at least the 1980s, but more obviously since 2000, it has become clear that not only has history not ended, but nothing has really changed. Force, violence, greed and disregard for human life and human rights are once more centre-stage. Just turn on the news.
The preface of today’s Mass sums up what this feast is all about. It expresses concisely what kind of kingdom Pius XI had in mind: a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace. It is distinctly possible, even likely, that these ideals of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace will always remain that, ideals, but they will always be ideals worth striving for.
Today’s readings talk about the one who makes belief in these ideals possible, who helps us to make these ideal realizable, who promises us that these ideals will eventually triumph.
The Jesus we hear about in today’s readings has none of the attributes we associate with kingship, either inherited or elected. He has none of the refined splendour of contemporary and mostly politically emasculated constitutional monarchs. Nor has he the smug air of entitlement or vulgar brashness of the elected or unelected monarchs of our powerful republics.
What he does have in common with certain hereditary monarchs is lineage.
The first reading tells us that Jesus is of the house of David. David, the anointed king of Israel, who despite his many human flaws, united all the tribes of Israel. The tribes said to him, ‘Look. We are your own flesh and blood…to whom the Lord has said, “You are the man who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you shall be the leader of Israel.”’ It is this Jesus who is the leader of the new Israel, that is, of the whole of redeemed humanity. It is he who has made us his own flesh and blood, made us members of himself and, with that, members of each other.
In the second reading from the letter to the Colossians, St Paul describes what God has done for us in Jesus Christ: ‘..he has taken us out of the power of darkness and created a place for us in the kingdom of the Son that he loves, and in him we gain our freedom, the forgiveness of our sins.’ St Paul then goes on to give a marvellously poetic and theological description of who and what Jesus Christ was and is: ‘…before anything was created he existed, and he holds all things in unity. Now the Church is his body, he is its head.’ Through Baptism, we belong to that body and belong to one another. He is our head – a monarch, perhaps yes, but of a kingdom where all are equal, a kingdom without any claim to confer nobility except that of being part of Jesus.
There is nothing at all regal about the gospel reading, this year from the evangelist Luke. Stripped and crucified, Jesus on the Cross is exposed to the ridicule of the powerful and of their hangers-on, exposed to the despair and disappointment of those who loved and believed in him, or in what they imagined him to be. And also present are the perplexed, if even still grimly and dimly hopeful, family and few disciples who cling to what remains of him. And then there comes in the very final sentence of today’s gospel, one of the most kingly, most majestic, most power-filled and simple statements of Jesus, ‘today you will be with me in paradise.’
Many monarchs can promise this, but only one can make it real. Only this monarch can relativize all earthly power and make the cross a throne.
That which the prophet-king of old
hath in mysterious verse foretold,
is now accomplished, whilst we see
God rule the nations from a Tree.
Hail Cross, of hopes the most sublime!
Now and in the end of time;
grant to the just increase of grace,
and every sinner’s crimes efface.