Eze 34:11-12,15-17; Psa 23:1-31,5-6; 1 Cor 15:20-26,28; Matt 25:31-46
THEME: Allow Christ to be the King of Your Life
Dearest in Christ, with the feast of Christ the King, the Church concludes her liturgical year. Hence, next Sunday, we begin a new liturgical year. The first question we have to ask is: why is this feast celebrated? To this, we have three reasons:
a. Pastoral: The first world war was very devastating. The question was “why would kings of the world not seek for peace but decided to go to war and wasted many lives?” So, after the war in 1925, Pope Pius XI introduced the feast of Christ the King in order to show the lack of peace in the world as a sign of limitation of the earthly kings. Hence, if the world fails to recognize the kingship of Christ, if the human kings do not place themselves under the kingdom of Christ, then they will always miss the road that leads to peace.
b. Liturgical: with the feast of Christ the King at the end of the Church’s liturgical year, the Church shows Christ to be the alpha and the omega of the Church’s life and teachings.
c. Spiritual: the feast of Christ the King reminds us that at the conclusion of our life, we are going to stand before the true King who will reward each one of us according to our deeds. Although merciful he is, he is also a just God. All of us are subjects of Christ the King. Are you in the kingdom of Christ or in the kingdom of men?
2. Give Us a King Just Like Every Other Nation
The reading of today, especially the first reading takes us back to 1 Samuel 8. When Israel finally settled in the land of their Promise, they were surrendered by many nations like Edom, Moab, Hatti, Egypt, etc. and these other nations had their kings and also their own gods, but Israel had no human king. Now, having seen others, and wishing to be like them, the elders gathered and said to Samuel, “appoint for us a king to rule us like other nations”. (1 Sam 8:5).
Although God understood this request of the people to mean that his own people have rejected him as their king (1 Sam 8:7), he still ordered Samuel to listen to their request. Even when Samuel explains to the people the implication of refusing God and choosing human kings (1 Sam 8:9-17), and they still insisted on having human king (1 Sam 8:19-20), God still said to him: “Listen to their voice and set a king over them” (1 Sam 8:22). This shows us that, although God wishes to be the one who rules our lives, he does not impose himself upon us. He knows that only him can lead his own people and do good to them, yet, he respected their choice, he did not force himself on them. Today, someone will want to rule, and people even when people do not want him to rule, he will impose himself, kill many people, do a lot of atrocities, tell lies just to make sure that he secures that political position. A true king does not fight for a kingdom or a right to rule, and when people refuse him as a ruler, he respects the people’s choice. So, the people of Israel started having humans as their kings, beginning with Saul.
3. The Human-Kings Failed
Having gained human kings like every other nation, they also began to suffer the limitations and the internal struggles over ‘who will be king’ like every other nation around them. Some of their kings maltreated them; some positioned themselves as gods; some led them into injustice and away from God. It is true that the people of Israel were a stubborn nation, but their exile to Egypt and Babylon respectively, was highly attributed to the lack of good kings. Shortly before what we have as our first reading today, we see the God expresses through prophet Ezekiel, the failure of Israel’s kings to fulfil the responsibilities of their office. Instead of caring for the people, they were busy enriching themselves, enjoying the wealth of the nation, building materially prosperous future for their children but the people were not taken care of (Eze 34:1-10). This is not the kind of king the people wished to have; this is not the kind of king that God wants for his people. But he allowed them to be led by such kings for years, even till they went to exile. The people were suffering at the hands of such wicked and unrighteous kings, and God allowed them to go through that people because they made such a choice.
4. “I will be the Shepherd of my People”.
While the people were in exile, and it became obvious to them that they were suffering because of their choice and their conducts, God now came in through the prophet of Ezekiel to announce that he himself will now shepherd his people. In exile, the people of Israel had no king of their own. Their kings could not even save them from being captured by Babylonians and from being led to slavery. But the interesting thing is that when exile happened, both the kings and the slaves were all victims. All the treasures packed in the king’s palace was carried to Babylon; king Zedekiah, who was the last king before Babylonian exile, was taken to Babylon, his children slaughtered before him, and his eyes plucked out by the Babylonian soldiers.
In today’s reading, God announces that he himself will now take on the responsibility of shepherding his people. The people belong to God, and only God knows how to take care of his own. Any human king will always look for his gain to the detriment of the people under him, but God’s gain is the joy and salvation of his own people.
5. The Homage that Christ the King Prefers
In the Gospel, we see how God rules his own people and the kind of homage he prefers as the king of his people. God does not need gifts of gold and silver; he only needs that his sheep take care of one another. It is not only that the human kings live at the detriment of their subjects, but also the subjects take advantage of others. In the same 34th chapter of the book of Ezekiel, after addressing those who suppose to take care of the sheep, God turns to the sheep themselves (Eze 34:17-24). Some sheep feed on their fellow sheep; some do not border if their fellow sheep eats or not. Some sheep even, because of few benefits they receive from the supposed-to-be shepherds, are ready to sacrifice their fellow sheep for their personal gains.
The kingship of Christ is the one that judges sheep, not based on what they achieve but based on how they treat other sheep. God promises that he will take care of his sheep, he will bondage the wounded and make the weak strong. But God will not come down to do these things, but he uses sheep to heal the fellow sheep. We all have something we can offer for others who are in need. Do you feed on others? Do you trample on others while looking for your own benefits? How far do you care for others? You cannot be sheep of Christ when you are maltreating, stealing from, abusing, and despising other sheep. In the kingdom of Christ, we are called not only to be peaceful but also to spread peace; not only to be good but to spread goodness; not only to be
faithful but also to bring others to be faithful.
The homage that pleases God is that done to our fellow humans. If you want to recognize Christ as your king, you have to recognize others as sheep of Christ.
May our prayers always be: Thy kingdom come O Lord!!!
Fr. Henry Nnamah
Catholic Diocese of Aguleri