Christ the King, an Inconvenient Truth

Today is the solemnity of Christ the King, the final Sunday of the liturgical year. This feast is an agreeable time to meditate on what it means to be the subjects of the king of the universe, Jesus Christ. In some sense, especially to us emancipated moderns, the notion of Christ as a king is a bit of an inconvenient truth, if I may use that overwrought phrase. We can deal with Christ the Good Man, Christ the Mystic, Christ the Liberator, Christ the Nonviolent, Christ the Fill in the Blank. And, to some extent, Christ was all of these things. Yet, he is and will always be a king. And we tend to cringe at that. Kings mean authority, law, and obedience - words that are not particularly well-liked in our culture of libertinism.

Christ, however, gives us a perfect model for all three. He is perfect authority himself. He is the Word of the Father made flesh and given authority over all things. He is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and perfectly merciful and just. Imagine if an earthly king possessed each of these characteristics! His kingdom would be overflowing with people. Christ is also the perfect lawgiver, the new Moses, who has seen God face to face. His law is true and extends over the whole world. It is neither an oppressive nor an easy law, but truth is never either of these things. And, finally, Christ is obedient. Obedience requires humility, of which Jesus is the paramount example. The qualities I have described above are true qualities of Our Lord, and they speak to his majesty and power. Yet, he also possessed the even stronger power to humble himself of these qualities and become a man, and suffer, and die as a finite man in a historical world - just like the rest of us. This is a king that I can follow.

As members of Christ's Body, we are each called through the virtue of our baptism to be loyal subjects to our King. Each day we are given the opportunity to respect and obey His authority and law, so that we might someday be called home to reign with him in his everlasting kingdom.

As I hinted before, these are inconvenient pills for us prideful moderns to swallow. We prefer lawlessness. We like to set ourselves up as our own kings in our own lives. As I read in a recent New York Times article concerning the recent troubles at Penn State, the reason we were so outraged with the persons in power there is that we are all "convinced of our own interior wonderfulness." We get so absorbed in how awesome we all are, fed by a culture that is hesitant to reprimand anyone, that we lose sight of the fact that each of us is a sinful person, capable of falling - and falling hard. Once we reject the idea that we are God's gift to mankind, we can get back on track following God's true gift to mankind - Himself.

Paradise Regained?

"If we had to choose today, would Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, the Son of the Father, have a chance? Do we really know Jesus at all? Do we understand him? Do we not perhaps have to make an effort, today as always, to get to know him all over again? The tempter is not so crude as to suggest to us directly that we should worship the devil. He merely suggests that we opt for the reasonable decision, that we choose to give priority to a planned and thoroughly organized world, where God may have his place as a private concern but must not interfere in our essential purposes." - Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Ch. 2

Ever since we got the boot out of Eden, we humans have been trying desperately to regain our earthly paradise. Perhaps we can say it began with the story of the tower of Babel, when we thought we could pridefully build our way back up to God. The attempts have continued since.

We have been discussing in my history of architecture class the various reactionary movements inspired by the Industrial Revolution. Mechanization of industry set in motion a number of attempts at Utopianism - attempting to create a beautiful, equal, and productive society. Of course, the most vile of these was Marxism, which lead to untold misery and disaster. However, it is perhaps the more milder ideas that still influence us the most. The captains of industry building rational, self-sufficient suburbs for their workers. The City Beautiful movement that sought to bring life and equality into city life. The Arts and Crafts movement that brought production away from the machines back into the hands of skilled artisans, who organized themselves in self-sufficient guilds.

The idea that we can somehow establish a utopian society on earth rests on two fundamental assumptions: that human beings are on a constant trajectory of moral and social advancement, and that our priorities are utterly and completely based alleviating all suffering in this world. Evidence of these two assumptions is plentiful in our American society. We laugh at the silliness and ignorance of those who came before us - thinking ourselves the most enlightened generation to ever walk the earth. We live in the 21st Century, for God's sake! We are naturally superior! We have evolved out of all that nonsense! Why does anyone need to suffer? Look at all of the technology we have developed, surely we can save ourselves from destruction of any kind!

We, as a society, have opted for a planned and thoroughly organized world. A world of complete rationality, escape from suffering, and constant material advancement. Where does God fit into a society where we set ourselves up as our own saviors? He is treated merely as an inherited cultural superstition - harmless to invoke in private, but an offense to our enlightened and decidedly sensible civilization.

My colleagues and friends are all engaged in professions that involve progress. I am not here to remotely suggest that progress in medicine, engineering, or design is inherently bad - quite the contrary! We are indeed called to assist our fellow man. However, it is when we suggest that we can exterminate suffering and live in complete peace and harmony that we approach the dangerous pride and subsequent ruin of Babel.

Our Lady of Sorrows

Last night at Bible study, we were discussing the sufferings of Christ on the Cross, and his endurance of all human suffering in that hour of his death. This was sort of a happy coincidence, since yesterday was the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, when the cross itself is celebrated as the instrument through which God chose to grant us his salvation. It is perhaps fitting, then, that the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows follows the feast of the Cross, and is celebrated today.

Consider the point of view of Christ's mother during his ordeal. Mary was powerless to protect her son, resigned to see him tortured and brutally killed, yet she was there, showing her maternal love, at the foot of the cross. In that moment of his death, she truly was a Lady of Sorrows - sorrow for both her son's immediate death and sorrow for the sins that placed the pain upon him. In that hour, the prophecy of Simeon was fulfilled: "Behold, this child is set for the fall and resurrection of many in Israel and for a sign which shall be contradicted. And your own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts thoughts will be revealed" (Luke 2:35).

So, at the foot of the cross, Mary suffered in relation to her son. Her soul was pierced with a sword of suffering. Perhaps the figurative sword was the pain of seeing the effects of sin, since she was so detached from it (often, we cannot even begin to grasp the profoundly damaging effects of sin). In any event, Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows gives us a phenomenal icon of hope, even in suffering. Though her heart was pierced with a sword of pain, Our Lady never fell into despair - for despair is the very opposite of Christian hope.

I think despair is more prevalent today than in other times. With all of our advancement in technology and knowledge, I think we are tempted to despair that all of it is for nothing - that the world is meaningless and our lives are just as meaningless. Despair kills charity and removes joy. But, even should we suffer the piercing swords of despair, doubt or suffering, we need only remember Our Lady of Sorrows, and her eventual transformation to Our Lady of Joy through the saving power of her Son.

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The painting is one of the most moving I've ever seen of the Madonna and her Child. It was painted by the French artist Adolphe Bourguereau and is entitled "Our Lady of Sorrows."