The Solemnity of Christ the King: The End of All Things is at Hand

Last updated on: March 9, 2017 at 4:29 pm by Scott Eric Alt

The Solemnity of Christ the King: The End of All Things is at Hand 2017-03-09T16:29:37-04:00 Scott Eric Alt

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John de Rosen, “Christ in Majesty.” Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. (Creative Commons.)

There 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.

***

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