Homily: 34th Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 24, 2024
My dear brothers and sisters, we celebrate today the last Sunday in Ordinary time. This last Sunday is usually the solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe. Perhaps one of the greatest merits of this solemnity of Christ the king is its positioning in the very last Sunday of the liturgical year. This solemnity gives our entire spiritual journey during the liturgical year a sense of direction and purpose. As Christians, we are not just mere animate beings making a zigzag purposeless motion on earth. Sometimes the vicissitudes of life can create an immense confusion in us and make us to lose focus from the very reason why God created us.
Brothers and sisters, we need to get this point very clear that God created us for a purpose. We are God’s children who are on a pilgrimage, we are on a spiritual journey navigating to an end point which is the kingdom of God where Christ reigns supreme. We are already citizens of this kingdom and in the fullness of time we shall reunite fully with Christ our king. St John tells us in 1st John 3:2, “beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed, what we do know is this: when He is revealed, we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
The gospel reading of today gives us a little illustration of what is required from citizen in the kingdom of Jesus. In this reading, two kings were presented, on one side is king Pilate. Let us try to picture Pilate in our mind, how he would be seated on his tribunal in all his pomp surrounded by the Roman soldiers in full armor, with spear and shield, politically he represented the mightiest power on all the earth; the power of the imperial Rome. His words were laws, if he did not like your face, he could sentence you to death. On the other side, we see king Jesus standing in front of him, worn out after the agony of many hours on mount Golgotha with marks of torture, blood and wounds all over his body. His king’s crown was the crown of thorns, and His throne was the cross of Calvary. The picture of Jesus as a king was simply a mockery and caricature of what a king should be, and the soldiers indeed mocked him all through.
However, it was in this pitiable and despicable state that Jesus clearly acknowledged himself a king and said that everlasting truth lied in the sacrifice that He was about to make. Comparing King Pilate seated on his throne in his full splendor and the ‘mock king’ Jesus standing in front of him, in the worldly way of evaluating reality, one can say that Jesus deserved to be told; get lost! However, history has eternal lessons for us. Does any human being on earth still pay homage to the mighty and splendid throne of Pilate? Imagine the great kings in the history of the world; Napoleon Bonaparte, King Nero, Pharoah of Egypt, Alexander the great, Augustus Caeser, King Nebuchadnezzar, King Solomon, King Henry VIII, Adolf Hitler and so on, some of these kings appeared to be little gods, but today their remnants can be found mainly in history books which many persons are not even interested to read. Jesus the supreme king of the universe built his kingdom on love and service and His throne on the cross, till today millions of persons are still ready to shed their blood to be part of His kingdom. There is power in the Truth.
Dear brothers and sisters, St. Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:19, “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.” Let us always strive to live like children of the kingdom of God, we belong to the kingdom of light where Jesus reigns supreme.
