Lectio Commentary: Feast of Christ the King, 2025
Commentary for Feast of Christ the King
In an encyclical establishing this feast of Christ the King in 1925, a few years after WWI ended, explained why this feast was established. The Holy Father wrote, “In our first Encyclical Letter . . . we referred to the chief causes of the difficulties under which mankind was laboring. And we remember saying that these manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Saviour, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. People must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ; and that we promised to do as far as lay in our power. In the Kingdom of Christ, that is, it seemed to us that peace could not be more effectually restored nor fixed upon a firmer basis than through the restoration of the Empire of Our Lord.” It would seem then, that Pius XI believed that the feast of Christ the King pointed to the fact that, “People must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.” What he believed is as relevant today as it was a century ago. We are threatened by the prospect of yet another world war, possibly a nuclear one this time.
In 1 Jn 5:19 we read, “the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” Arguably the jeers of the rulers, Roman soldiers, the crowd and the bad thief were, unknown to themselves, voicing the antagonism of Satan the accuser. In Wis 2:16-19 we read, “He calls blest the destiny of the righteous and boasts that God is his Father. Let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him in the end. For if the righteous one is the son of God, God will help him and deliver him from the hand of his foes. With violence and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience.” In Plato’s Republic there is a very similar passage where a good man “shall be scourged, tortured, bound... and at last, after suffering every evil, shall be impaled or crucified” in order to see if he really is good or just pretending to be so. It is an ironic fact that all of the tormentors of Jesus talk about salvation, of one kind or another. The good thief however admits his guilt while recognizing Jesus for who he is, a just man who did not deserve to suffer. When he requested, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom“ surely, he implied that Jesus is divine. When Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise,“ not only were they words of salvation, they were a truly fitting conclusion to the jubilee of mercy. In Luke 23:43, “paradise” most likely refers to a real place of blessedness and fellowship with God, but not necessarily the final heaven—it’s often interpreted as an intermediate state before the resurrection. This aligns with Jewish concepts like “Abraham’s Bosom” (Luke 16:22), a peaceful part of Sheol or Hades where the righteous rest.
This whole account reminds one of what St Paul said in 2 Cor 5:21, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus died as a sinner, in the sense that although he was sinless, he acted as our scapegoat by taking the sins of the world upon himself. As Is 53:4 says, “our are the sins he carried.” That is symbolized by the fact that he died in the midst of sinners. He did not condemn or judge those sinners who taunted him at the instigation of the devil . As St Paul observed in Rm 5:10, “while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”
My late friend Cecil Kerr used to say that no one can boast at the foot of the cross. As we raise our hands asking for mercy like the good thief, our hands intertwine in a new-found unity. Our Year of mercy could end with verses from Eph 2:14-16 which Cecil constantly repeated “he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down tin his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”
