Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
John 18:33-37
‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ Pilate asked. Jesus replied, ‘Do you ask this of your own accord, or have others spoken to you about me?’ Pilate answered, ‘Am I a Jew? It is your own people and the chief priests who have handed you over to me: what have you done?’ Jesus replied, ‘Mine is not a kingdom of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my men would have fought to prevent my being surrendered to the Jews. But my kingdom is not of this kind.’ ‘So you are a king then?’ said Pilate. ‘It is you who say it’ answered Jesus. ‘Yes, I am a king. I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.’
Friends, Elie Wiesel, was a Romanian born, American writer. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and was a Holocaust survivor. The Nobel committee called him a ‘messenger to mankind’ where through his personal struggle to come to terms with “his own experience of death camps…he had delivered a message of peace, atonement, and human dignity.”
Wiesel’s 1962 book ‘The Town Beyond The Wall’ is an account of a holocaust survivor returning to his hometown after World War II had ended. The character of the book returns home to satisfy a curiosity. On some level, he understood the brutality of Auschwitz with its prison guards and executioners but what he could not understand was the attitude of a man whom he calls ‘the spectator.’ This was an individual, who peered down from his apartment window overlooking the main square of the town, watching. Everyday, watching the Jewish population of the town being rounded up and put on trains never to be seen again. This was in part, Wiesel’s own personal story.
Over the years he said: “I realised why I wanted to go back to see that man. He saw us in the courtyard…and there he was indifferent. I wanted to confront him. I began fighting indifference. I wrote about it; I spoke about it. The opposite of love is not hated but indifference; the opposite of education in not ignorance but indifference; the opposite of life is not death but indifference. It is because of that face that I remember, the face in the window.”
Reflection
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King. This feast originated in 1925. As the age of dictators was beginning, with Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany, Pope Pius XI, with then rubble of the Great War still around him and much of Europe, wanted to remind the faithful that lessons still had not been learn. Pius noted that “evil was ever present in the world because people has thrust Jesus and His example out of their lives; and without Christ in people and in Nations, there could be no prospect of a lasting peace.” So, in augurating the Feast of Christ the King, Pope Pius was presenting God’s people with a challenge to become together a living expression of God’s peace and love in the world.
But just how do we do that?
We do so by not being indifferent to the needs, struggles and problems around us and within the world. We do so, by not being spectators but by being players, actively involved in doing something to change the world around us for the better. Even the smallest of acts, can have the biggest of impacts. They can make the greatest of changes.
Christ Himself was not a spectator. He was never indifferent to the needs and struggles of those around Him. He set about caring, loving, witnessing, getting involved and He never stopped. It brought Him to Pilate in a bloodied, bruised, and battered state. But even here, thought a spectacle for everyone to look at, He does not stay a spectator. He continues to witness to what is right, to witness to what is true. The power of Jesus, as He stood before Pilate, was rooted in His intimate relationship with God. Jesus was truth incarnate and love incarnate; He had great power, even as He appeared helpless before Pilate. Jesus’ final words to Pilate was a call to all people, starting with Pilate himself, to stand with Him in what was right and true – ‘All who are on the side of truth, listen to my voice.’
Friends, today and always, we strive to do just that. We strive to live, act, and speak as Jesus calls us to. We push ourselves never to be indifference and never to stand still. We move within our community, our country, our world to be the best witnesses of Christ that we can be. We love. We care. We get involved. We strive to be Christ to others.
When we do, we are then standing on the side of truth, we are standing on God’s side; and with God on our side, all is possible.
Fr. Richard