In 1925, in the wake of the horror of the Great
War, Pope Pius XI created the Solemnity of Christ the King,
which we celebrate this weekend.
In the opening paragraph of the encyclical “Opus Primas,” by
which he announced that decision, commenting on the awful
experience of the war, he wrote: “These manifold evils
in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had
thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that
these had no place either in private affairs or in politics,
and we said further, that as long as individuals and states
refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no
really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations . .
. When once men recognize, both in private and in public
life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the
great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline,
peace and harmony.”
These words might be jarring to contemporary ears, but they
convey to us an absolutely certain and necessary truth.
It may be the case that Christ’s kingdom is spiritual and “not
of this world.” It may be true that we must carry out
our civic duty responsibly and carefully in the context of the
place divine providence has given us in history, in our case,
modern, democratic, American society. Nevertheless, it
also remains true that in the end, only Christ is King, and
there is absolutely nothing on earth that falls outside of his
rightful rule, whether individual hearts, households, or
nations. Every human heart was made to find its place in
the Lord who created and saved it, and it remains true that
there is no real peace outside of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus. Indeed, all nations are temporary, and even as we
follow God’s command to work fervently ‘to preserve the one in
which we dwell, we do so by remembering that the only lasting
nation is Christ’s Kingdom.
There, Christ is King by right of nature, since he is the
Almighty God, and it is his very self that determines the
contours of our own natures, and indeed, of all truth.
Christ is King by right of conquest, since by his triumph on
the cross he conquered the devil, our enslaver. And of
course, Christ is King by right of love, for he loves each of
us individually, more than any candidate or politician ever
has or could, even if they were inclined to, and indeed more
than we love our own selves. We might be permitted to
choose lesser evils on occasion when picking leaders from
among our merely coequal brothers and sisters, but there is
only good to be found in Christ’s healing and compassionate
authority.