Dear Parish Family,

This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. It is one of many opportunities the Catholic Liturgical Church year offers to each of us consider “the creature” which is called time, receive it as a gift and begin to really live differently. Yet, for many Catholics who commemorate this Feast, it is just one more somewhat esoteric celebration which we go through every year at this time. This mistake is at least right on one count, it really is all about time.  The Catholic Christian notion of receiving time as a gift from God is one of the many things which make us counter-cultural. In fact, the number of things which make us counter-cultural is increasing as the West abandons its foundations in Christendom and embraces a secularist delusion. The early Christians, before they were even called Christians, were referred to as the Way. (Acts 9:2) That was because they lived a very different way of life. A Way of Life which drew men and women to the One whose name they were soon privileged to bear, Jesus the Christ.

To impact our lives we, Catholic Christians need to move from seeing the Church year as just some kind of "Catholic custom" to seeing it as an invitation to enter into the mysteries of our faith in a manner which informs and stimulates our entire life. We do not really go to Church; we live in the Church and go into the world, to bring the world, through the waters of new birth, into the Church as a new home, a new family. There they (the world) will find the grace needed to begin a whole new way of living. So time truly matters. What we do with it truly matters. That is as true of the history of the world as it is our own personal histories. One of the searching questions we should ask ourselves at this time every year, in a blunt examination of conscience, is what are we doing with time? Do we choose to mark our passage of time by the great events of the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Our Catholic liturgical year follows a rhythmic cycle which points us toward beginnings and ends. In doing so, it emphasizes important truths that can only be grasped through faith. This Sunday, the Feast of Christ the King, is the last Sunday in the Church year. Pope Pius XI introduced this feast in 1925 because nations and states were abusing their power. The feast is meant to highlight the moving in time towards a final time of the coming of the King. Our conscious awareness of time makes it a path along which the redemptive loving plan of a timeless God is revealed and received. In Christ, time is now given back to us as a gift. It offers us a field of choice and a path to holiness and human wellbeing.  We pray in “Our Father” ‘Thy kingdom come’. And we make the Kingdom come not so much in words as in our lives. We proclaim it by our peace, love and joy. We express our gratitude for being called to be a citizen of this Kingdom by being happy, happy to be me. We proclaim the coming of the Kingdom by “earthy mysticism,” by living an ordinary earthly existence while “keeping our eyes fixed on Christ our King.”

  Fr. Thomas Kunnel C.O.