Christ the King
(A-cycle)  November  23,  2008

But in today’s Gospel, picturing the Last Judgment, Jesus is very much a king, “seated on his glorious throne with all the nations assembled before him.” He pronounces judgment, he the only human being qualified to do so because he alone sees into human hearts and minds. Strangely, for a king, he seems to identify not with the high and mighty but with the down and out. In the ancient world, wealth was seen as a sign of God’s favor. Maybe we’re not so different. Don’t we sometimes speak of respectable people, as if the poor were not worthy of respect?  The hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoners---he says the world should have seen him in them.

It’s interesting to me that the saved as well as the damned seem to be blind to his presence in their more unfortunate brothers and sisters. The sheep, like the goats, say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or lonesome or naked or sick or in prison?” Even though the saved apparently treated the needy decently, they seemed to have missed the presence of Christ in them. That brings up the question: Whom are we missing? Toward whom are we blind as to the Christ in them? Could it be people of races different from our own? Or of different religions? Do we see Christ in Protestants, the Orthodox, in Jews, Muslims, Hindus and the adherents of all other religions? Do we see Christ in people with whom we differ politically? Do we see Christ in the disabled and the handicapped? Is he visible to us in the homosexual and the transgendered? Can we see him in people whom we call “foreigners”? To be a loyal subject of Christ the King, is to recognize him as present everywhere in everyone.