Today we celebrate the solemnity of Christ the King and in the Gospel, Jesus tells us “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats”. And in this judgement, we are asked if we have fed the hungry, the thirsty, welcome a stranger, clothed the naked, or visited the sick and those in prison?
The homilist reminds us, this is a striking list of asks. Namely because it has nothing to do with the religious rules and regulations of our faith.
The King does not ask if we have attended mass faithfully. If we have abstained form meat on Fridays, or done regular confession.
Instead, the focus is again on loving our neighbour.
For in our service to our neighbour we grow closer to God and understand the true meaning of love.
That is not to say practising our faith is not important. Attending mass, going for confession etc does lead us closer to God and strengthens our faith lives. But these alone are not enough. We need to be strengthened so that we can go out and love our neighbours.
So as we remind ourselves today to put Jesus as the King of our lives. We need to ask ourselves, truly, do we serve Christ as our King and place him above all.
Or are we serving the many others kings in our lives like secularism, materialism and placing ourselves first in everything we do.
For like any other earthly King that demands absolute obedience. Christ the King also wants us to focus only on Him.
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