Feast of Christ the King of the Universe Read more
Feast of Christ the King of the Universe
First Reading
2 Samuel 5,1-3
All the tribes of Israel then came to David at Hebron and said, 'Look, we are your own flesh and bone. In days past when Saul was our king, it was you who led Israel on its campaigns, and to you it was that Yahweh promised, "You are to shepherd my people Israel and be leader of Israel." ' So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a pact with them in Yahweh's presence at Hebron, and they anointed David as king of Israel.
Psalmody
Psalm 121
Antiphon
Call for peace for Jerusalem.
'I rejoiced when I heard them say :
'Let us go to God's house'.
And now our feet are standing
within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is built as a city
strongly compact.
It is there that the tribes go up,
the tribes of the Lord.
For Israel's law it is,
there to praise the Lord's name.
There were set the thrones of Judgement
of the house of David.
For the peace of Jerusalem pray :
'Peace be to your homes!
May peace reign in your walls,
in your palaces, peace!'
For love of my brethren and friends
I say : 'Peace upon you!
For the love of the house of the Lord
I will ask for your good.
Second Reading
Colossians 1,12-20
giving thanks with joy to the Father who has made you able to share the lot of God's holy people and with them to inherit the light. Because that is what he has done. It is he who has rescued us from the ruling force of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son that he loves, and in him we enjoy our freedom, the forgiveness of sin. He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible, thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers -- all things were created through him and for him. He exists before all things and in him all things hold together, and he is the Head of the Body, that is, the Church. He is the Beginning, the first-born from the dead, so that he should be supreme in every way; because God wanted all fullness to be found in him and through him to reconcile all things to him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, by making peace through his death on the cross.
Reading of the Gospel
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Luke 23,35-43
The people stayed there watching. As for the leaders, they jeered at him with the words, 'He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.' The soldiers mocked him too, coming up to him, offering him vinegar, and saying, 'If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.' Above him there was an inscription: 'This is the King of the Jews'. One of the criminals hanging there abused him: 'Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us as well.' But the other spoke up and rebuked him. 'Have you no fear of God at all?' he said. 'You got the same sentence as he did, but in our case we deserved it: we are paying for what we did. But this man has done nothing wrong.' Then he said, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.' He answered him, 'In truth I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.'
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Homily
This Sunday closes the liturgical year. There is an anxiety of universality that inspires this feast, namely the salvation of humanity and of the entire universe. The liturgy wants to open the eyes of believers on the end of human history: the universal salvation that Jesus accomplishes. For this he is referred to as "king of the universe". The Word of God takes us once again by hand to introduce us to the mystery of the kingship of Christ. And it makes us understand first of all that we are not contemplating a mystery from the outside. No, we are in it, as the apostle Paul suggests in the Letter to the Colossians inviting them to thank God who "has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Col 1:13). We are truly "transferred", or if you want "emigrants", from this world, where darkness reigns, to another world, where the Lord Jesus reigns. That this world of Jesus is "other" from ours is evident from the evangelical scene that is proposed to us today as an image of the kingship of Jesus: He is nailed to the cross with two thieves next to him.
Well, on that cross Jesus defeats this dogma. Love destroys the deepest conviction that presides over the life of men and women: everyone tries to save themselves, except for Jesus who has not thought of saving himself but others. It is in this perspective that we read the royal power of Jesus which finds its culmination right on the cross. And we immediately see the effect. By not yielding to the last temptation - that of saving himself -, Jesus-king saves one of the two thieves who was next to him only because he saw how far love had led Jesus. And together with that thief Jesus wants to save everyone, without any exception. A prayer is sufficient. The feast of Christ the King of the universe is the feast of this love, a love that is totally given to others, until the last drop of blood. On it all our hope is founded, our today and our tomorrow.
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
For the sick, in memory of the dead, for peace
