Reign of Reconciliation
The church year ends in triumph…sort of.
The final Sunday of the year is called, depending on who you ask, Christ the King or Reign of Christ or, if you want the full title, The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.
Quite a mouthful, but where did that title come from? Take it away, Google AI:
“The feast is celebrated on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. Pope Pius XI established the feast in 1925 in response to the growing threat of secularism, atheism, and communism. The feast was originally celebrated on the last Sunday of October, but in 1969 Pope Paul VI moved it to the last Sunday of the liturgical year. The feast is observed in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as in Lutheran, Anglican, and other Protestant churches.”
The centerpiece of Trinity Cathedral’s reredos is Christ with arms open, simultaneously sending us out to love the world and welcoming us home to an eternal embrace. This to me signals not ‘kingship’ so much as reconciliation: that we are drawn through our faith to one-ness with God and union with our neighbor.
Nevertheless, the reredos has a kingly vibe to it, to be sure. It’s an appropriate image for the culmination of the church year, a liturgical story that is one where Jesus’ heart becomes our own.
Though I wouldn’t place much stock in a liturgical antidote to what ailed us in 1925, the ever-present realities of “isms” continue to tarnish our souls and erode our capacity for openhearted love. Racism, nationalism, authoritarianism, still plague us. And being human, we will forever be tempted by the easy answers of consumerism or secularism or religion that caters comfortably to our preferred ‘isms.’ Yet Christ calls us not to membership in the right movement, but to reconciliation, to union with God and with the world that God created.
That union comes through the same self-giving and self-emptying that Jesus models for us. It comes through courageous justice work, through transformative soul-work, and through the lively and joyful work of prayer.
So with respect to Popes Pius and Paul, I’d propose that we regard this final Sunday of the church year as Reconciliation Sunday, when we celebrate the fullness of life in God that experience together, in a world transformed by the love of our creator.
The Very Rev. Bernard J. Owens