By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
In
days past, when Saul was our king, it was you who led the Israelites out and
brought them back. And the LORD said to
you, 'You shall shepherd my people Israel and shall be commander of
Israel.'" When all the elders of Israel came to David in Hebron, King
David made an agreement with them there before the LORD, and they anointed him
king of Israel. 2 Samuel
5:2-3
Above
him there was an inscription that read, “This is the King of the Jews.” Luke 23:38
Piety
Piety is how we steal heaven for ourselves. Piety makes life worthwhile. It offers us the chance to make the ordinary
extraordinary. It allows us to touch the
God of the present moment. Piety is how
the Lord makes up the difference between what we do and what we should be doing. Piety
looks at the dying of Christ and adds our dying to it. Piety is the joy of making up what is wanting
to the sufferings of Christ’s body, the church.
It is the key to the kingdom of God for us. It makes Christ the King of our lives by
taking our ordinary actions of life and turning them over to the Christ of the
Kingdom of God. The feast of Christ the
King makes life worthwhile because of our relationship to Christ. Christ is the same, yesterday, today and
tomorrow. We have a union with Christ in
heaven even while we call him king here on earth.
Study
We study the kingship of Christ and enter into what
might be called a marriage contract. Mystical
marriage is the ultimate surrender off our lives in a consuming love of Christ. We study how to perfectly belong to Christ. We build our love of Christ up to the point
where we would not want to be treated any differently than Christ. What does it mean to have Christ as the love
of our lives? The third degree of humility of St. Ignatius is what we are trying to comprehend
in the practical order of daily life. Christ
is our way, our truth and our life. How
we realize this in the concrete road of salvation. The demands of daily life make discernment
the study of how well our lives fit into the life of Christ. The goal of love is the oneness of the
marriage vows. How completely we unite
our lives to Christ is the goal of walking with Christ and the result of trying
to put on the mind and the heart of Christ.
Christ in his humanness is safe in heaven. But he
suffers in the oneness the Sacramental life of the Church gives us to him. How we enter into his life comes from our
efforts to put into practice what we find in the Saints of our lives. A saint is one who has found the meaning of
life in Christ. They try to live their
lives as Christ would live his.
Action
We read the lives of the Saints so that we might become
the “Christs” of our day and age. When
we discover how to live more closely to Christ, then we discover how love
brings us closer to who Christ would be in our age. We are created in the image and the likeness
of Christ. When we find ourselves in
Christ, we are discovering who we are meant to be. We study Christ as the King of our lives. We try to live our lives walking his road to
the Cross. The throne of Christ is the
Cross. The Cross is the tree of life. How
well we carry our crosses will reveal how Christ is the king of our lives. Our claim to fame in heaven will be our
discipleship of Christ seen in how well we have carried the Cross of Christ. The tree of life is the victory of Christ
over sin.
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