Christ is a Greek word, which means Messiah in the Jewish language. The Jews believe He is the Anointed One, the King who would deliver Israel from the Romans.
When Pontius Pilate, governor of Israel, asked Jesus if He is, indeed, King of the Jews, His answer was: “No, My kingdom does not belong here.”
“Are you a king then?” Jesus replied, “You say that I am King” (John 18:33-37).
Crucified on a cross between two thieves, the soldiers nailed Jesus’ identification above his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (John 19:19).
Consubstantial with God the Father, Jesus has everything common with His Father, absolute and supreme power in heaven and Earth until the end of the world. The Creator, the Good Shepherd, the Savior of mankind, “He is the first born from the dead” so that “primacy maybe His in everything” (Colossians 1:16:18).
State of the world
Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) has said that “evils have now settled upon the world.” A wall has been erected “between church and civil society…the authority of sacred law utterly disregarded.”
He lamented the exclusion of religion in the public life and affairs, and said that “insolent pride” has, indeed, eroded the “foundations of public welfare.”
Not only is the “removal of Christian faith from our midst is possible,” the pope said, too. It is also “the banishment of God Himself from the Earth.”
This is the state of the world described by Pope Leo XIII when he issued his Encyclical Annum Sacrum (Holy Year) on May 25, 1899, hopeful that with the Consecration to the Sacred Heart, God will reign in the hearts of man.
Four years after, Pope Pius X (1903-1914) issued E. Supremi, his first encyclical. He noted the disastrous “efforts to destroy utterly the memory and knowledge about God.”
Terrified of what he considered as a challenge and a glorious task, the pope issued his October 4, 1903, letter to all bishops, titled “Restoration of all Things in Christ.”
‘Quas Primas’
Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the king on December 11, 1925, in his encyclical Quas Primas (In the First). The pope reigned in an era when dictatorship and secularism were on the rise in Europe. Christians doubted “the authority of the church,” worst, the pope said, “the existence of Christ.”
With the waning respect for the church, its leaders and God, the pope was “hopeful that the church has the right to freedom and immunity,” and leaders of nations would realize they “are bound to respect Christ.”
The pope was, likewise, optimistic that Christians, through the celebration of the feast, are reminded that Christ must reign in man’s “body, heart, mind and will.”
The encyclical cited that the chief cause of the difficulties of mankind were the “manifold evils in the world, the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and His holy law out of their lives that these had no place either in their private affairs and politics.”
The feast was originally celebrated on the last Sunday of October. When the church calendar was reformed in 1969, the feast was moved on the last Sunday of Ordinary Time of the Liturgical Calendar, which is the Sunday before the Season of Advent. In 2017 this falls on November 26.
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Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons