Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Osmond Anike

Readings:

First Reading: Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17 – The Lord will judge between sheep and sheep.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 22(23):1-3a, 5-6 – The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

Second Reading:1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28 – Christ will hand over the kingdom to God the Father; so that God may be all in all.

Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46 – I was naked and you clothed me; sick, and you visited me.

 

The last Sunday of the liturgical year is the 34^th Sunday, and has, since the calendar reforms of the Second Vatican Council, been traditionally dedicated to the celebration of the Solemnity of Christ the King. At the sixteenth centenary celebration of the Council of Nicaea – the council that defined Christ’s consubstantiality with the Father – Pope Pius XI instituted the Solemnity of Christ, King of the Universe. This was contained in his encyclical “Quas Primas” written on December 11, 1925. To understand the rationale behind this feast, one has to situate its establishment in its proper historical context. The year 1925 falls within the period of the aftermath of the First World War, and during which the events that eventually led to the Second World War were already brewing. Europe – the so-called “Christian Continent” – was in turmoil. There was an explosion of hatred among nations as a result of conflicting ideologies and blind sense of nationalism. It was hoped that the end of the First World War would usher in a period of peace. But instead, it was as if people learnt nothing from the devastation of that war. Nazism, with its satanic symbol, the swastika (which is a disfigurement of the cross) was already taking hold of Germany; and Hitler was ready to unleash his heinous assault on the world. In Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution which gave birth to atheistic Communism was already taking firm grip on the country. Self-styled emperor-like brutal dictators were unleashing their megalomaniac venoms on the poor hapless populations of the world. In summary, leadership in the world was degenerating into global terrorism where only the so-called leaders and their cohorts were the privileged few who forced down the throats of the rest of the people their intolerable ideologies and worldviews.

 It was as this scenario was playing out that the pope published his encyclical proclaiming Jesus as the King of the Universe. In doing so, he chose the language of peace, justice, love and community in order to counteract the then current language of war, hate and blind nationalism that have polluted the entire world. The pope was cognizance of the fact that Christianity was being compromised, and that people were beginning to worship the self-proclaimed emperors instead of God. In Germany, the “German Christians” went as far as embracing the Nazi symbol, the swastika, by placing it along with the cross on the altars as sign of duty to God and country. They affirmed their absolute support for Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Germany, insisting that the cross of Christ and the swastika should not be made to oppose each other because they belong together. The intellectuals were also compromised and, teachings in universities became propaganda as evidenced from the infamous “Declaration of German Intellectuals” on October 4, 1914, at the beginning of the First World War, done on behalf of “emperor and fatherland”. In fact, it was this declaration, which most of his university professors were signatories to, that, among other things, made a certain young protestant pastor, Karl Barth, to abandon the liberal theology he was moulded to preserve, and started charting a new theological course for himself. Barth was so disappointed with his professors and the type of theology they have come to represent that he concluded that the reason God’s righteousness eludes us is because people think, speak and act “as if” they were God, thereby trying to domesticate God’s righteousness. In doing so, they tend to transform God’s righteousness into varieties of human righteousness, one of which is the moral principle with which people have used in justifying “the capitalistic order of society and the War”. He just couldn’t reconcile Christianity’s supposed principle with what was obtainable in the so-called “Christian Europe”. This was what led Barth to seek to discover the real Kingdom of God in the Bible – a Kingdom that couldn’t be brought by any other than God himself.

The feast of Christ the King is meant to demonstrate that people make a mockery of God’s Kingdom when they use Christianity to advance their political goals by promising their followers a direct entrance to God’s Kingdom only if they follow their blind ideologies and at the same time demonize their opponents. The Kingdom of God can only be brought about by entering into relationship with the righteousness of God and not with human righteousness. The Lord says in the first reading of today: “I am going to look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view… I myself will pasture my sheep; I myself will show them where to rest”. And in the Gospel, Jesus gives us the criteria for entering into his Kingdom: “I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink…” When Albert Einstein said that, “Many of the things you can count, don’t count; and many of the things you can’t count, really count”, I also understand it to somehow apply to the Kingdom of God. Jesus has just selected the little acts of kindness which we don’t count as counting for the Kingdom of God.

Today, 95 year after the establishment of the feast of Christ the King, history appears to be repeating itself in almost exactly the same way; the only difference being that the country and the individual leading this current assault against the world are located in the other side of the Atlantic. Nazism started as a joke, and Hitler as a clown. By the time the world realised what was happening, the church and the intellectuals (two institutions that would have stood as a barrier against his assault) had been decapitated. With no strong barrier, it was a free ride to the gas chamber. Although Karl Barth co-led a resistant movement against Hitler with a few like-minded professors and pastors notably through his active participation in the “Barmen Confession of Faith” that acted as an opposition to the “German Christians” movement, he and they paid the price by having their teaching jobs terminated (some, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were outrightly executed). Today, another “terminator” is in the other side of the Atlantic decapitating the so-called evangelical Christianity and notable intellectuals, and terminating the appointments of the very few who dared to challenge him. Like Hitler, his movement started as a joke, and he started as a clown and as an impostor. Nobody took him serious until it was too late. He has now proclaimed himself “life emperor”, and his followers are growing at a terribly alarming rate and spreading across the globe. Evangelical cheerleaders are all over the place mixing together his own brand of swastika (the red-coloured cap) with the Bible, just as was done during the Hitler era. By proclaiming him as “God’s anointed” chosen to “defend” their faith, they have made him, not Jesus Christ, their (not our) Lord and saviour. This was exactly what the “German Christians” thought and proclaimed about Hitler. And what is even more worrisome is that whereas the leadership of the “German Christians” movement who supported the atrocities of Hitler were mostly the Lutheran Christians, the so-called “Evangelical Christians” championing this current “life emperor’s” atrocities include even some catholic cardinals and bishops. I invite you to go and study the relationship between Hitler and German Christianity and you will be terrified at what is happening now across the Atlantic.

To combat this “new virus” and stop its devastating spread, we need, more than ever before, to bring back to the public sphere the emphasis on Christ the Universal King. Salvation can never come through human beings; salvation comes through Christ. Human impostors may act “as if” they are God; but they are there only to loot and plunder and to satiate their ego. The real Kingdom of God is brought about by God himself, not by human beings. As we celebrate this feast today, may we strive to not allow history repeat itself.