Letter from the Pastor
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November 26, 2023
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King. It is the last Sunday of the Church’s year 2023. Next Sunday we begin a new year of Grace 2024. The Gospel we will hear for the New Year will be from St. Mark.
Today at 4:00PM, to thank God for the many graces and favors we received this past spiritual year, we will offer prayers of thanksgiving to God through the Evening Prayer of the Church. We will pray the Te Deum and then receive the Benediction of our Eucharistic Lord.
The first time that the Feast of Christ the King was celebrated was October 31, 1926.
In December 1925, Pope Pius XI announced a new Feast of Christ the King in his encyclical Quas Primas. The Pope made it clear that the purpose of the new feast is not merely to honor Christ’s Kingship, but to encourage individuals, families, and entire societies to submit to Christ the King. He wanted to embolden the faithful and to bring Christ back into society.
After a beautiful reflection on how Our Lord exercises full power over all of humanity, the Pope added, “It would be a grave error…to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to Him by the Father, all things are in His power.”
According to Quas Primas, the “pest of our age” is secularism, the attempt to build society without God. Secularism began with a political restriction of the Church’s ability to govern her own people, and to relegate the Church to the sidelines. There was also the secular idea that the Church should be subordinate to the State.
The result of this secular marginalization of “Jesus Christ and His holy law,” the Pope argues, will be constant war between nations, assaults on the family, domestic strife, insatiable greed, and a blind and immoderate selfishness—“in a word, society shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin.” Remember this was written back in 1925!
According to the teaching of Pius XI, the solution to this plague is to “look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ” by recognizing, “both in private and in public life, that Christ is King.”
Pope Pius’ vision is captured in the following verses from the Vespers hymn for today:
The wicked mob screams out:
“We don’t want Christ to reign!”
But we rejoice and say:
“Thou art the Supreme King of all.”
May the leaders of nations publicly honor and extol Thee;
May teachers and judges reverence Thee;
May the laws and the arts
Be a reflection of Thee.
May the insignias of kings shine forth
In their submission and dedication to Thee.
And bring under Thy gentle rule.
Come and join us Sunday afternoon at 4:00PM and publically declare:
Christ is King.
