“Today we celebrate the solemnity of Christ the King, the king of the Universe and this is the end of our liturgical season and it’s so right that we end with this feast that Christ is the King because when he first started his public ministry what did Jesus say? He said, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand.’ The kingdom of God is at hand and throughout his life he was trying to show us that. He was trying to show us that in right relationship to be truly righteous which means to be in right relationship then we will be with God, then we will see the kingdom of God. How do we be in right relationship? I find often times we’re separated, we’re segregated, we’re polarized and it always happens it seems like a left and a right, right? Left and right, we have our right hand, we have our left hand, we have republicans and we have democrats, we have extroverts and we have introverts, we have the right hemisphere which is more the creative side to see things holistically and we have the left hemisphere which is more analytical. We judge each other by left and right always and we make the judgment between right and wrong don’t we? But what was the first sin all about? In the second reading it says, ‘As Adam died in his sin then we all died, but with Christ rising then we all will rise.’ So it always starts with Adam and it ends with Christ. The first sin of Adam is reaching for the fruit of good and evil to know right and wrong and Christ is really to bring it all together. The thing is that we need both. We are a both and church aren’t we? We’re a both and church. So conservative or liberal, really we need to be together and so we have to come together. We come together in prayer and in some sense it’s our right and left, but yes we come together in prayer and today we see the judgement of God. The last few Sundays we’ve been talking about the judgement of God, the end times and I think it was 3 weeks ago it was the virgins, to persist in our prayer, persist in our faith, to wait for God. Last week it’s to be good stewards of our faith and this week the parable is to love others in our works, but it shows God, it’s always in the parallel of His mercy and His judgement. We see this motif throughout scripture, but we see it that God’s right and left hand is his mercy and justice, but we have to see it hand and hand just like everything else. We have to see it hand and hand because without each it falls apart and so this feast shows us that all things are under God. His kingdom means that everything has to be underegis of God, dominion over all, dominion in all of your life, your aspects, your thoughts, your will, your heart, your body, is it guided by God? Is Christ the king of your life? If He is, He will bring it into completion. Christ calls each one of us to be whole, to be holy. That’s what it means to be holy, to be fully with Him, but he invites us to join Him in His salvation for the world. Each one of us is called to join Him in participating in the salvation of the world, but how do we do that? I think in today’s Gospel it tells us how.
St. John Paul II said that the battle between good and evil isn’t outside of us, but it’s in each and every one of our hearts, the battle between good and evil and I think it starts with us judging ourselves. We judge ourselves don’t we? We judge ourselves by what we think, what we do, our sins. We’ve been trained to judge ourselves and yet judge the world, but now can you balance that out with the mercy. Can you be merciful to yourself? It’s hard though. It’s hard to be merciful to ourselves, but that’s why we need others in our lives, to balance that out and so we get to the Gospel today: Jesus’ judgement of separating the sheep and the goats and the sheep, Christ calls too and he said, ‘You fed me, you clothed me, you gave me water when I was thirsty, you visited me when I was in prison and they asked, ‘when did we do that?’ And he says, ‘Whenever you did that for the least one of my brothers and sisters you’ve done for me.’ And also with the judgement he cast others to the judgement and said, ‘You didn’t clothe me or give me food or give me drink or visit me in prison.’ and they ask, ‘When did we not do that?’ And it’s when you didn’t do these for my brothers and sisters you didn’t do for me. To have Christ fully in our lives, dominion over all of our lives brings us into full, right relationship with not only ourselves, but the whole world. Right relationship and in so, if we have right relationship with ourselves through God’s grace then we will start to have right relationship with everyone else in the world and it all comes together under the kingdom of God, but it first starts with you. It first starts with you. Today’s Gospel is a good way to examine our conscience. Is Christ the king of your life, in your mind, your heart, your soul and your body? Does He guide it? Does He balance it? Or even looking at, did you feed someone in your life today? Practically speaking there are still hungry people in the world. Have you done something to help feed the hungry. If you push a little deeper, how about feed someone who’s been hungering for your attention? There’s someone in your life that God put in your life who’s maybe hungry for attention, for love. Did you feed them? Those who thirst, still in this world there’s not clean water throughout the whole world. Did you give water to those who thirst? Or those who thirst for love in their life, have you given the water of love for others who have thirsted for it? Those who are in prison, have you visited those who are imprisoned or maybe take it a little deeper, those who are addicted by their addictions, their own sins, have you helped someone through that? Dorothy Day has said that everything in our lives implicitly and explicitly should be connected to the corporal works of mercy, the spiritual and corporal works of mercy and it’s in those relationships that we have with others that we start to understand the mercy of God in our lives. It starts to purify our hearts of this dualistic way of thinking of purely right and wrong instead of the wholeness that God has in store for each one of us, but it’s difficult and that’s why Christ gives us the sacraments, especially the Eucharist which we’re about to prepare for, the communion, the host to nurture and sustain our souls so that we can bring our sins here to the Mass, sacrifice them and ask Christ for our daily bread and then go out and do the work of God in our lives and keep on coming back for more. So as you come before the Lord today where Christ is truly present before you in the Eucharist, let us have the strength and the courage to look at our lives honestly just as it is, to know that yes, we do struggle with left and right, right and left, but that we want to be whole, we want to be holy and it’s through communion with Christ that nurtures and sustains our life. Once we have that we will start to see the kingdom of God and we will proclaim to the world that Christ is King, Christ is King of the Universe. Amen.”