The Solemnity of Christ the King: The end of all things is at hand.

here is a right way to talk about the end of our lives, the end of time, the end of all things. It is not the way of Harold Camp­ing; we may not pre­dict hours or dates. It is not the way of the Left Behind series; we must not spec­u­late about plot or pol­i­tics. We are not to prog­nos­ti­cate every time there is war or rumors of war. We are not meant to have apoc­a­lypse anx­i­ety. Rather, I sus­pect that what is prop­er is to be mind­ful that our years are short and that our real home is else­where.

THE END OF ALL THINGS IS AT HAND

Christi­na Ros­set­ti, whose poems for the litur­gi­cal year will be famil­iar to reg­u­lar read­ers of this blog, had urgent but repose­ful words to say about the “Sun­day Before Advent.”

The end of all things is at hand. We all
Stand in the bal­ance trem­bling as we stand;
Or if not trem­bling, tot­ter­ing to a fall.
The end of all things is at hand.

O hearts of men, cov­et the unend­ing land!
O hearts of men, cov­et the musi­cal,
Sweet, nev­er-end­ing waters of that strand!

While Earth shows poor, a slip­pery rolling ball,
And Hell looms vast, a gulf unplumbed, unspanned,
And Heav­en flings wide its gates to great and small,
The end of all things is at hand.

Although life and earth are good, eter­nal life is bet­ter, and we are not to cov­et or cling; the final stage of death is always accep­tance and let­ting go, and we are to cov­et only “the unend­ing land.” This is hard. Earth is tac­tile, and breath a sweet fill­ing of the lungs, and I, as any­one, am attached. I hate ter­ri­bly to have to say good­bye, and I hate ter­ri­bly that some of the great­est peo­ple I’ve known are no longer with me. But then, that does remind me I am meant to go where they have gone. We yearn for per­ma­nence, which means we were made for per­ma­nence; and if we are elud­ed it is only because we are seek­ing it here when it is there.

That is why God is to be praised for giv­ing us the con­tin­u­al ris­ing and set­ting of the sun. It is why He is to be praised for giv­ing us the cycle of the sea­sons. And it is why the Church in her wis­dom has giv­en us the litur­gi­cal year. These things keep us mind­ful of an approach­ing end. They keep us mind­ful, too, of reck­on­ing. For if Ros­set­ti under­stood the need to “cov­et the unend­ing land,” she also under­stood that “we all stand in the bal­ance trem­bling … or tot­ter­ing to a fall.” “Hell looms vast,” she reminds us. And Christ, who is in majesty, is our advo­cate but also King and Judge. So all the more we must remem­ber the com­ing end of all things.

TREMBLING AS WE STAND

He is called “Angry Jesus,” but I appre­ci­ate John de Rosen’s art­work at the Basil­i­ca of the Nation­al Shrine of the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion. I used to belong to the Church of the Warm and Fuzzy Jesus. I used to have an image of a Jesus who did noth­ing but walk around hold­ing lambs and pat­ting peo­ple on the head. But now I’m mid­dle-aged and jad­ed and a Jesus who is ticked off all the time makes more sense to me. De Rosen’s Jesus is Howard Beale in glo­ry. De Rosen’s Jesus is the one who said, “How can you escape the damna­tion of Hell?” De Rosen’s Jesus is the one who flogged the mon­ey­chang­ers with cords. I like that Jesus. I want the day to come when Satan and all evil-doers go per­ma­nent­ly down.

COVET THE UNENDING LAND

Christ is King. The Christ who came to us came to us as an infant; he came to us as the image of a human being. That is not the Christ who will come again. That is not the Christ we will go to, if that is where we go. When Christ comes again, He comes in glo­ry and vic­to­ri­ous; He comes as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Should we not say that? Should we be both­ered, or fright­ened, or offend­ed, or uncom­fort­able at the sight of “Angry Jesus”? My guess is that the real dis­com­fort that some have with this depic­tion of Jesus has a lot to do with latent sor­row and guilt. We wor­ry that Christ’s expres­sion is direct­ed at us, per­haps because we know it deserves to be.

The mer­cy of God, and God in humil­i­ty, are easy to under­stand, and com­fort­able. But the jus­tice of God, and God in glo­ry, chal­lenge. If, at the begin­ning of the litur­gi­cal year, we pre­pare for the humil­i­ty of God in the womb of Mary and in the man­ag­er in Beth­le­hem, who came for mer­cy and sac­ri­fice, it is right that at the end of the year we con­tem­plate the glo­ry of God on the throne, whose tri­umph and jus­tice are just as cer­tain. They are the same God, and we can­not under­stand the one with­out under­stand­ing the oth­er.

And so we cel­e­brate the solem­ni­ty of Christ the King. The Church has cel­e­brat­ed it since 1925, when Pope Pius XI, in his encycli­cal Quas Pri­mas (here), attempt­ed to respond to the grow­ing tide of sec­u­lar­ism with­in mod­ern cul­ture:

When once men rec­og­nize, both in pri­vate and pub­lic life, that Christ is King, soci­ety will at last rec­og­nize the bless­ings of real lib­er­ty, well-ordered dis­ci­pline, peace, and har­mo­ny. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human author­i­ty of princes and rulers with a reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance; it enno­bles the cit­i­zen’s duty of obe­di­ence. … If princes and mag­is­trates duly elect­ed are filled with the per­sua­sion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the man­date and in the place of the Divine King, they will exer­cise their author­i­ty pious­ly and wise­ly …

The error of sec­u­lar­ism is the belief that there is no life beyond this life and no pow­er beyond the pow­er of this world. The solem­ni­ty of Christ the King is meant to remind us that we were made for anoth­er world and that all pow­er is of that world, where Christ reigns in glo­ry. Attach­ments are vain and earth­ly rule is vain. Wealth and good looks and good health and every­thing on earth we love will pass. If we remem­ber Christ the King—if we remem­ber “Angry Jesus”—then our pass­ing will be sweet and we will rest in His glo­ry.

Crown Him with many crowns.