Christ the King

The history of salvation is known among believers as a story of persecution of the people of God by secular rulers and empires. Commentators on the Book of Daniel, from which the first reading of the Roman Catholic Lectionary is taken today, have associated the persecution stories with four world kingdoms, Babylonian, Median, Persian, and Greek. The beast imagery of the Book of Daniel has been used extensively in the Book of Revelation, where it is applied to the Roman Empire as persecutor of the Church. Friar Jude Winkler notes that the image of the Son of Man coming on a cloud to overcome the evil forces represents the people of Israel who will have dominion over the their persecutors through their Covenant with God. The image of the Son of Man in the passage from the Book of Revelation is the Servant King who transforms us to be priests and witnesses to the majesty of the Love of God. Father Larry GillickSJ writes of the three tensions experienced by Pilate and known to us when we encounter Jesus. We are drawn to Jesus. Perhaps, like Pilate, we are perplexed by the lack of concern for the power of worldly forces we witness in Jesus. We know the tension of the world with its demands and expectations and the consequential slavery we accept to meet those demands. We, like Pilate, struggle with an ego which always sets us up to expect to deserve and receive better attention for our own kingdom of self image in the world. The Gospel of John presents the Christ the King as glorious on the cross which defines the Word made Flesh as Love. The message of dominion over the kingdoms of the world in Daniel and Revelation is the first and last statement of God in Glory. Love conquers all.