34th
Ordinary Sunday (Year A)
(CHRIST
THE KING)
First
Reading: Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17
Second
Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:20-26,
28 Gospel
Reading: Matthew 25:31-46
“COME, YOU WHO ARE BLESSED BY MY FATHER. INHERIT THE KINGDOM.”
A story is told of a priest assigned in a seminary who took his sabbatical year in Kolkata, India to work with Mother Teresa. Towards the end of his sabbatical, he wondered what he could take back to his seminarians. Thinking back, he remembered how Mother Teresa received Holy Communion: her eyes and face glowed with love for Jesus as she expressed the desire to give him back her love completely. For the priest, that was understandable for she was then already known as 'a living saint.' But what he could not understand was what he saw one evening when she was with a sick person. The same glow in her eyes and face was present when she was attending to him. Reflecting on these two experiences, the priest discovered why. For Mother Teresa, that sick person was Jesus himself for did he not say: “Whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me”.
Do we see Jesus' face in others, especially the poor,
needy, marginalized, deprived, downtrodden, sick and suffering, and
so on? Jesus meets us in their disguise. They are his true face.
INTRODUCTION:
Today
is the 34th
Sunday in Ordinary Time and is the Last Sunday of the Liturgical Year A. Next Sunday we will
start a new Liturgical Year B with the First Sunday in Advent. As is
the custom now, on this Last Sunday the Church solemnly celebrates
the feast of “Christ
the King”.
It
is one of the so-called 'idea
feasts'
that do not celebrate an event in the life of Jesus but rather some
aspect of his identity. In it we recognize and honor Christ as ruler
and universal shepherd. Also, this feast helps us to look towards our
future and our ultimate future is, when Jesus will return in glory
for the final judgment and award reward or punishment. Actually, this
feast is, as it were a synthesis and culmination of the entire
salvific mystery. The feast brings the Liturgical Year to a close.
All during the past year, we have celebrated the mysteries of the
life of the Lord. Now, we contemplate Christ in his glorified state
as King of all creation and of our souls. So, the Feast of “Christ
the King”
is the occasion for us to give glory to the Lord of Heaven and Earth.
Today’s
Scripture Readings revolve around the final judgment of Jesus Christ
when he comes in glory and power. The
First Reading
from the book of the Prophet Ezekiel provides an image of God leading
His people with the care of a shepherd.
In the context of the passage, it is God Himself who vows to take
personal responsibility for tending His sheep, because the entrusted
shepherds have not been found worthy of their charge. God will come
to tend to the sick and ailing sheep but will separate and punish
those who have made themselves strong at the expense of the weak. In
the
Second Reading
from his 1st
Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul reminds the Christians at Corinth
of the fact of the resurrection from the dead, just as Jesus Christ
died and rose to life. Death, inherited from Adam, will itself be
destroyed. Those who belong to Christ will form part of his Kingdom.
In this Kingdom all will be subject to Christ the King. The
Gospel Reading
from St. Matthew speaks about the Last Judgment and presents Christ
as the King coming in his heavenly glory to judge us. Each person
will be distinguished as a sheep or a goat according to a simple
standard of practical attention to those who suffer. The standard of
judgment is simple enough, “whatever
you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me”.
What may surprise us is Jesus' identification with the most
insignificant.
“THE
LORD IS MY SHEPHERD.”
Today's
First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel makes reference to
one of the most beloved images of God, namely, God
as Shepherd.
During the Babylonian exile, Ezekiel issued a scathing denunciation
of the false shepherds who had led the people astray. In the section
of this chapter of the Book of Ezekiel which precedes this reading,
the prophet warns the leaders of the people, who serve as shepherds
for the nation, that God will remove His sheep from their charge
because they allowed the sheep to become prey to the wild animals and
remain unfed while the leaders fed themselves. Now, in what must
surely have been words that brought relief and hope to the exiles who
were on the verge of despair, he delivers the Lord’s promise to
return, to shepherd the people once again Himself. The mention of
judgment adds an eschatological dimension that makes the text all the
more fitting for this last day of the Liturgical Year. The choice of
psalmody is obvious in light of Prophet Ezekiel’s use of the
shepherd imagery. It sings of the Lord as the Good Shepherd who will
feed, guide and protect His sheep. It is in the Lord that true
goodness is to be found.
“FOR
HE MUST REIGN UNTIL HE HAS PUT ALL HIS ENEMIES UNDER HIS FEET.”
The
Second Reading from St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians
underlines the cosmic character of Christ’s Kingship. Here St. Paul
presents a powerful and awesome picture of Christ as Lord and King,
to whom every other power and authority must eventually give way. He
speaks of the all-encompassing authority of Jesus the King as a
result of his resurrection: “For
he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The
last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
The resurrection of Christ, “the
first fruits of those who have fallen asleep”
is the beginning of an entire harvest of risen people. This
phenomenon of destruction of death and of being raised to new life is
geared towards this cosmic goal: “so
that God may be all in all.”
The
Adam-Christ typology is an important part of Paul’s developing
understanding of the importance of the resurrection for the believer,
and especially how we participate in Christ’s resurrection through
faith and baptism. Because death (sin) came through Adam and we are
linked to Adam because of our human nature, it was necessary that the
resurrection of the dead also come through a man, through Christ.
This new life can only come through him, who through his own death
and resurrection erased the stain of sin and triumphed over death. As
a result of his resurrection, he now reigns as king. At the end of
time, Christ, having brought all things under him, will himself be
subjected to the one who drew all things to him. Christ rose. Christ
reigns. Christ will come again in glory. We will rise. The Lord is
fully and completely God forever. This we celebrate on today's
Solemnity that draws the Sundays of the Liturgical Year to a close.
THE
LAST JUDGMENT:
In
today’s Gospel Reading from St Matthew we hear 'The
Parable of the Sheep and the Goats',
which is the third of the three eschatological parables in Ch 25.
Jesus uses a parable about what we traditionally call the 'General
Judgment'
at 'the
End of the World'.
This parable is not a prediction of historical event in detail,
however. It is a provocative challenge to the hearers to reflect upon
the lives they live and to adjust so as to live ever more fully. This
parable, like the previous two, challenges us to see and appreciate
our daily lives fully aware of our eventual human death and future
encounter with the God in who's image we are created.
Again,
the judgment scene is unique to St. Matthew's gospel and forms the
climactic conclusion to his Eschatological Discourse. Only here in
all of the gospels does Jesus ascribe to himself the status of a king
rendering judgment. Incidentally, this is not to be taken in too
literal a sense. It is the meaning behind the scene which we are to
focus on. It would be a worthless piece of speculation to imagine our
encounter with God as taking place in any particular way analogous to
life on earth. One wonders, too, if there is any real validity to the
distinction sometimes made between the 'particular'
and the 'general'
judgments. The images of the Son of Man coming on the clouds of
heaven with hosts of angels are typical biblical images pointing to
God's awesome greatness and transcendence and are not descriptions of
some visual experience we might have.
There will be two kinds
of people coming for judgment, described respectively as “sheep”
and “goats”, the good guys
and the bad guys. And how are the good and the bad guys to be
distinguished from each other? The
criteria of that judgment are most striking: They are the simple acts
of love and kindness directed to the 'least
ones'
of this world. The parable holds high the most humane virtues. The
specific actions mentioned are (i) feeding the hungry, (ii) giving
drink to the thirsty, (iii) clothing the naked, (iv) sheltering the
homeless, (v) visiting those in prison, and (vi) taking care of the
sick. Add (vii) burying the dead, and we have the traditional 'Seven
Corporal Works of Mercy'.
To have done these everyday works of goodness is to have touched
Jesus himself; to have neglected to do them is to have neglected the
needs of Christ, an omission worthy of condemnation. This implies
that doing the works of goodness called for here is already to have
gained access to the reign of God and to have chosen not to act in
love is already a choice not to belong to God’s reign. Note
that none of the above things Jesus mentions are religious in nature
and
also there is no mention whatever of any commandments being observed
or violated; people are condemned not for doing actions which were
morally wrong but for not doing anything at all.
It is quite obvious that
both groups are very surprised at the criteria that Jesus presents.
The 'sheep' are clearly very
surprised to hear them say, “Come,
you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom.”
This is obviously not what they were expecting to hear. One gets the
impression that they hardly remember doing these things although
definitely they had done at least some of them. And certainly they do
not remember ever doing anything of the kind for Jesus. “Lord,
when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you
drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and
clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?”
Were they even more surprised at the answer they got?
“Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for
one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.”
Then turning to the 'goats', whom
he calls 'accursed', he condemns
them for not doing any of the things he mentioned above and for not
recognizing Jesus in the least brothers of his.
CONCLUSION:
Today,
we solemnly celebrate the feast of “Christ
the King”.
We must be on guard against taking this feast the wrong way. This is
no nostalgia trip back to an age of royal prerogatives, court
pageantry, and kingly alms-giving. This feast is not 'looking
back'
at all but 'forward'
to something we have never seen. Actually, today’s solemnity is a
reminder that the Kingship of Christ is not 'up
there'
but is very much tied or moored 'down
here'.
Moreover, the picture of the Judgment in the Gospel is not meant to
fill us with fear and trembling. No, it is a challenge not about the
future but about today. It makes us appreciate the ever-expanding
expanse of his Kingship. So, if the Solemnity of Christ the King is
to make sense, and that we ought to submit to the rule of Christ,
then it is imperative that we understand how his Kingship is
exercised. The sole criterion for judging
our worthiness to inherit the glorious Kingdom is our exercise of
love, especially on behalf of the poor and needy. Our compassionate
hearts are our badge of belonging to God's Kingdom. Our corporal
works of mercy indicate the divine power of love at work within us.
We
are thus judged not for the positions we hold in the community, our
social status, academic records, wealth, heroic deeds, etc. Neither
will we be judged by the number of prayers we say daily unless they
lead us to greater love of God which in turn leads us to the service
of the poor - “the
least brothers of mine”,
for Jesus not only hides behind these vulnerable people but
identifies himself with them. To sum up, what we are told is that, if
we wish to be counted among the sheep, then we must be an actively
loving person, irrespective of the response we get to our love. This
is the way God loves us. It is not enough just to fulfill
obligations, religious or otherwise. It won’t do to say, 'I
am a good enough Catholic'.
Neglect of the needy in our circle, in our neighborhood, in our
nation and in our world equates to neglect of the parable's king!
Now,
for us who embrace the Gospel, the King is the Christ! Do we neglect
him? How will we explain the lives we’ve lived and our use of the
blessings we’ve been given? Would a just king genuinely rejoice in
how we have lived in the past, do now live, and might yet live in the
future? To gauge how well we are faring in this regard, let us
answer this question right now: If Jesus comes as Judge right now,
will he be able to say to us, “Come,
you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom”?
If not, then we still have a lot of work ahead of us. And this is the
Good News of today.
**********************
No comments:
Post a Comment