Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 34 / Sunday: Solemnity of Christ the King
Readings: Ezekiel 34.11-12, 15-17 / Psalm 23.2-2, 2-3, 5-6 (R/v 1) / 1 Corinthians 15.20-26, 28 / Mathew 25.31-46
Tis the season, is it not? No, not of Christmas yet. But of holidays to rest and relax, to unwind and chill, to have quality time with family and friends. A number of us will do this by holidaying abroad.
Over the past few weeks in St Joseph’s Institution, my teachers have been sharing their holiday plans with me. Three young teachers are now in Finland for the snow; they are posting winter scenes on their Facebooks. A few will depart on family holidays to Japan for the food. Several are heading to Australia to be with their children and grandchildren. The international staff are going home for Christmas. My young Buddhist teacher who quotes St Paul is making his silent retreat in a monastery. Listening to them, I could not help but think that they are all trying to find that most wonderful place, that happy destination, to be at in the world at this time.
But you and I are here on this last Sunday of the liturgical year. I wonder if we would allow ourselves the time and space right now to appreciate how being here, at the end of this past liturgical year, is indeed a most wonderful place to be at, even if we feel we have not lived the past twelve months well as Christians.
Looking back, I am sure we all have had many moments when we did live our faith well. We were in happy friendship with Jesus. We deepened it; we live more fully; we gave thanks for it. May be we live it so well that the love of God in us enliven and enriched our family, friends, colleagues and even strangers. Let’s celebrate these.
However, there would also have been times when we did not live our faith in the Christ-like ways we wanted to. In these moments we knew were far from God and that we hurt others. Let us be honest about these. Like: when our gossip hurt friends, our infidelities and addictions pushed loved ones away, our stinginess denied someone hope, our unforgiveness dismayed God. We might regret these. Today, our remorseful might make us identify with the goats and rams in today’s gospel reading whom the Son of Man judges as unfaithful and unloving, fit only to be condemned into hell.
If this judgment about failing to care for others is all that we take home from today’s readings, we would miss the Good News that today’s readings are collectively proclaiming.
These readings are chosen for the Feast of Christ the King. The Church insists we end our liturgical year, our past year of faith, by celebrating Christ as “king.” Did the Church think that our readings can help us understand our past year?
The simple answer is, “yes”. Because we will better make sense of our lives this past year when we look back at to see where Christ was present, labouring for our wellbeing. Our readings can help us do this. They offer images of sheep and shepherd to help is consider our relationship with Jesus this past year.
The First Reading challenges us with the honest demand to consider if our words and actions have scattered God’s sheep over the face of the earth, away from God and one another. God’s sheep who are those we love, those we work and study with, those we do ministry with here, those who come, go, and pass us by every day.
How have we tended them—led them to pastures to grow and thrive or have we ‘eaten’ then up? Listen to how God attends to them: “I shall look for the lost one, bring back the stray, bandage the wounded and make the weak strong”. Isn’t this how God has been acting in our own lives? Coming to seek us out, caring for us, repeatedly, and inviting everyone into mutual relationship with Him. This God shepherds—not just protecting but also shepherding all into fullness of life.
We know this truth and this is why we so readily find comfort, assurance and hope in our responsorial psalm. We sing it at funerals and at profession of vows, we pray in difficult times and we give thanks with it in joy. As we sang it, paying attention to the numerous ways God has shepherded us through life, didn’t we smile knowing God is faithful as he promised. God’s goodness and kindness are all around us. God has walked us beside restful waters, through green pastures.
But God’s shepherding is not a holy ideal, a theological proposition, a scriptural image. It is concrete: its form is Jesus, as we hear in our second reading. Shepherding was how Jesus lived and ministered on earth. He preached to Jews and Gentiles. He ate with tax collectors. He forgave the adulterous. He healed the sick and infirmed. He shared life and faith with the apostles. He laid down his life for all to have eternal life.
These are ways Jesus revealed how great God’s shepherding is. It was always real and present, always giving life and life-changing. How can we experience Jesus’ shepherding now that he is with God and we are on earth?
By making Jesus’ invitation in today’s gospel reading real and present, life-giving and life-changing in our interactions with one another. This is the invitation he makes: “whatever you do to one of the least of my own, the Lord says, you do it to me”.
His invitation calls us to become more like him in the coming liturgical year that begins next Saturday with Advent. A new year, a new beginning, another chance to live our Christian faith better by following Jesus. We follow Jesus best by doing onto others what God has done onto us—loving selflessly and giving life lavishly.
We experience this goodness of God in how Jesus shepherds us, his sheep. Today he invites us to become shepherds to others, as he is to us.
Pope Francis reminded priests and laity at the Holy Chrism Mass in 2015 that Christ-like shepherding begins when we put ourselves aside to place others before us. Then our shepherding will smell of them, God’s sheep. This is the grace of imitating Jesus’ shepherding; that the odor of God’s people becomes our own. Jesus exuded it in his life and ministry. It did not stink. Instead, it is that rich, fragrant scent of God’s love alive in him.
You know this scent. You can smell it in those who shepherd like Jesus. It is part of them; it remains with them. It lingers because it is God’s faithful presence laboring in them to serve all, especially the hungry and the thirsty, the naked and the imprisoned, the ill and the needy, the stranger. Serving them is God's plan of salvation for each of us. Jesus revealed this through his shepherding, most especially to the end by laying down his life for all.
To shepherd like Jesus, we must willingly offer everything we have and we are for others—not because it is simpler but because this is the way Jesus enfleshed God’s love and life amongst us. He leads them to God and cares for them in God’s ways. Being with them, he smells of them, God’s sheep. This is who Christ the King is: shepherd-king with us and for us always.
As King, Christ is not remote, far away from his subjects. He is “in the trenches”, doing the shepherding himself. He calls us to join him to shepherd everyone. This is Jesus’ initiative. Even if we have not shepherded each other perfectly in Christ-like ways this past year, we did humble ourselves to let God into our lives to lead us. For Jesus, our openness to God, however much we tried, is good enough for him to invite us to shepherd others alongside him again.
So here we at the end of another liturgical year. It is the most wonderful place to be in the world right now not because we’ve reached a destination or place. Rather, it’s wonderful because of who we find is with us here—Jesus.
Jesus who shepherds us by caring for us and thinking of us. Jesus who prays for us and who keeps us in his heart. Yes, Jesus who assures us he is with us to the end of time—this Jesus who is Christ, the King. King of the universe, but, more so, King of our lives.
Preached at St Ignatius Church and Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
photo: https://benziher.wordpress.com
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