Commentary on the Gospel of
The True King
Read:
David is anointed king of Israel. God, the Father, in his great mercy, has made us members of the Kingdom of his Son where fullness dwells. Jesus, the Eternal King, reigns from the Cross.
Reflect:
In the desert, after tempting Jesus and failing, the devil “departed from him until an opportune time” (Lk 4:13). The devil revisits him, in far more disguised manner, while Jesus is on the cross: the temptation comes through the crowd around him who jeer him and ask him to prove himself as King by coming down from the cross: a temptation no different from that in the desert where the tempter asked him to jump off the Temple to prove himself to be the Son of God. Jesus refused then; he refuses now as well. For, his Kingdom is not one of grandiose spectacles at the service of oneself, nor is his Kingdom to prove anything before anyone: His Kingship, and thereby his Kingdom, is all about making oneself vulnerable and powerless for the sake of love, a kenosis (self-emptying) unto death in order to give life to all (cf. Phil 2:5-11).
Pray:
“Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”
Act:
Spend some time today in personal adoration of the King of Kings.
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"Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe".
"Christ is the centre of the history of humanity and also the centre of the history of every man.To Him we can refer the joys and the hopes,the sorrows and the anguish that weave our lives.When Jesus is the centre,even the darkest moments of our existence are illuminated,and He gives us hope,as happened to the good thief in today's Gospel.
Every year the liturgical year ends with the feast of Jesus Christ King of the Universe, a beautiful and meaningful way of concluding a whole year's journey, dedicated to commemorating the mysteries of our Saviour, which illuminate and unveil our personal and community lives. Let it be clear that his Kingdom is not like those of this world, that it in no way competes with earthly kingdoms, but is compatible with any just regime that serves the common good; Jesus is a true King; he himself confesses this openly before the Roman governor Pilate, who questions him: "Are you the King of the Jews? (Jn 18,33-37).
Today's Liturgy tells us that Jesus Christ was born in a manger and said that "the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor". The kingdom of Jesus Christ is a kingdom that transcends and surpasses human realities without ignoring them. It is not a kingdom of force, conquest or violent imposition, it is simply a kingdom whose summary he gave in the Our Father and in the Beatitudes. His Kingdom comes to us when we meet Christ, recognising his lordship, even though it should lead us to fight so that society, the neighbourhood, our world of work, the family, come closer and closer to Jesus' project. From the first moments of his apostolic activity, the Lord organised a community, whose destiny was to be in the seed (Mt 13,31-32) and leaven in the dough to transform the preferred order into a different and more human world, more in accordance with his message.
Let us not be like those who rejected the sovereignty of Christ, seeking to expel him from listening to society, from the family and even from each one's own conscience.
The question we must ask ourselves today is how to build the Kingdom of God. For this is both a gift and a task.
Prayer: Let us pray to the Lord for all those who are oppressed and unjustly treated... and for all of us, so that we do not remain impassive in the face of this.
"HAPPY SUNDAY TO ALL".
