Liturgy of the Sunday

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.