The kingdom within

One beautiful way we can pay tribute to Jesus, our King is to unite our sufferings to his on the cross.

Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger

The kingdom of God does not come for all to see; nor shall they say: Behold, here it is, or behold, there it is; but the kingdom of God is within us, for the word of God is very near, in our mouth and in our heart” (Lk 17:20-21).

God is no showboater! Though the song may insist, “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” the only throne the Son of God ever claimed as his own was the cross. Not only did he ascend to it, but he also carried it!

Recently, a good friend reminded me that the word “excruciating” is derived from the Latin word crux, which means “cross.” No pain, no death in the world is as horrific and agonizing as a crucifixion. Literally, the breath of life is sucked out of the crucified. I suppose some analogy might be made with childbirth, like passing a basketball through a nostril — for anyone who has experienced it.

I remember Laura, a wise and prayerful woman, herself a convert from evangelicalism, insisting that our parish mission statement must at least include the name of “Jesus.” We had worked hard on it yet had forgotten that none of the things we wanted to announce to the world that we were all about were either relevant or possible unless united with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It’s not about us, but HIM. “Lord Jesus, King of my heart,” was the prayer that echoed from the depths of Laura’s soul as she would keep reminding us of what evangelization is really about: making Christ’s presence felt in the world. How else would this ever happen unless we became fully united with him and with one another in his passion, death and resurrection, every moment of our lives?

In recent dialogue which I have been sharing with my dear friend Carol who is currently in the early stages of recuperation from a serious fall in a kitchen — she was washing dishes, backed up, lost her footing and fell backward, breaking her hip and wrist in the process — we were marveling how even in the midst of pain, agony really, we can come closer to Jesus. The real Jesus, that is. Not those staid and sumptuous effigies of “Christ the Royal” represented in monarchical robes on the cross, but the bloody, gory  and sweaty versions which, though still severely sanitized, invite us to come closer to the horror that indeed it is.

Why then do we worship Jesus Christ as King? Why celebrate this feast at all as a solemnity to close the liturgical year? To me it represents a kind of summing up, appropriate at the end of the year to honor Jesus as he truly is of course. Yet I think it is as much an occasion to pay him the tribute he certainly deserves as it is to ask ourselves do we take him seriously? It is one thing to make a profession of faith in so many words. It is another to take it to heart and live honestly according to what we claim to believe.

To honor Jesus as King means more than believing in his Real Presence in the Eucharistic transubstantiated species which we receive in Holy Communion and reserve for adoration as a prolongation, as it were, of the Mass. If we consume him, albeit with the greatest reverence, is it with a desire and a willingness to be changed by his enduring life within us in every way, mind, heart, body and soul? IF, and only if, we receive him as the Lord of life, not only does he and he alone occupy the throne of our hearts, which belong by right to him alone, but every pretender, every idol must go. Whether that false god is some person, habit, possession or attitude, it needs to be rejected for he, she or it cannot possibly save us and we are in violation of the First Commandment, the most fundamental of all.

If Jesus is truly our King then we cannot confine him only to a tabernacle in a church, for an hour a week, or in one special room or niche in our home. He must be taken into every room of our house, to every site that we visit, be it virtual or geographic. Take Jesus to a bar or a restaurant or a supermarket? Yes, that is exactly what I am suggesting because if we cannot imagine Jesus with us in some place that we occupy, then we do not belong there in the first place.

One of the challenges with imaging Jesus as King may be those stereotypes that tempt us to think of royalty as dwelling only in palaces or other luxurious surroundings. The kind of kingship that Jesus represents is not that of wealth or dominion. The only throne he ever ascended was the cross, unless we want to include the ass he mounted on his entry into Jerusalem which, as we well know, did not bring any lasting glory. Four days later the same mob that welcomed him was spitting in his face. Even most of his chosen ones were fleeing into the alleys.

One beautiful way we can pay tribute to our King is to unite our sufferings to his on the cross. If in the process it begins to dawn on us that so many of our sufferings are self-inflicted, that is, brought upon us by our own sins, failings and weaknesses, all the more are we ready to accept the unconditional love that he offers each and every one of us, not because we have been good, but precisely because we are sinners in need of his mercy. If we accept his love and welcome him into our hearts so as to be changed by him, then we are, as it were, giving him the permission to be our King and Savior.

St. Augustine offers us a beautiful reflection on the incident reported in the Gospel of St. Luke, which we heard last Sunday. “The repented thief,” he says, “was the first person to declare publicly that Jesus is King. Not some theologian, religious scholar or rich person, or even a holy person. No! A common thief! And by his repentance and simple prayer of needing Jesus, he committed one last act of robbery: he stole the Lord’s heart and so entered his Kingdom.”