Solemnity of
Our Lord Jesus Christ The King [A]
Ezekiel
34:11-12,15-17 ─ 1 Corinthians 15:20-26,28 ─ Matthew
25:31-46
November 20,
2011
“The Lord is my shepherd; there is
nothing I shall want.” [Psalm 23:1]
In the moment after your baptism, the priest
anointed your head with Sacred Chrism, saying, “As Christ was anointed Priest,
Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of His
Body, sharing everlasting life.” Your
entire life on this earth—at least, inasmuch as you conform your human
will to God’s divine will—is spent carrying out those three
roles: the role of priest, the role of
prophet, and the role of king (or queen).
These three roles help us focus our reflection each fall on our
commitment to the Stewardship Way of Life.
These three roles are also the “lenses”, if you
will, for you to look through as you reflect on the particular vocation
that God gave you (of, if you are young, has in store for you). Two Sundays ago, the homily focused on
the third of these roles: the
role of king. In Sacred Scripture
the role of king is inter-twined with, and often parallels, the role of the shepherd. The readings today, on this Solemnity of
Christ The King, illustrate at length this role of “shepherd / slash / king”.
Last Sunday, the homily focused on the role of prophet. In the Old Testament, the role of
prophet was exemplified by Moses. In the
New Testament, the role of prophet is fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Throughout His earthly life and ministry,
Jesus served mankind as the perfect prophet.
The greatest example in His public teaching is His Sermon on the
Mount. The greatest example in His private
teaching among His apostles was at the Last Supper, in the prayer that John
records in chapter 17 of His gospel account (often called His “High Priestly
Prayer”).
But Jesus isn’t just a prophet whose words instruct
people. Jesus was sent into our world by
God the Father primarily to be a priest, whose priestly sacrifice was
His own self, not rams and bulls, as the priests of the Old Testament
offered in the Temple. To show the
importance of Jesus’ priestly sacrifice on Calvary—the sacrifice that Jesus
makes present for His followers in the Sacrament of the Eucharist—I want to
contrast Jesus’ roles as prophet and priest, and point out how Jesus’ prophetic
role serves, and leads to, His priestly role.
If we think of Jesus only as a prophet, and
compare Him to well-known teachers such as Confucius, the Buddha, or Plato, we
miss the point of the Gospel entirely.
Jesus’ prophetic teaching isn’t its own point. The point of Buddhism is to imitate
the Buddha by practicing what he taught.
The point of Confucianism is to imitate Confucius by practicing
what he taught. The point of Platonism
is to imitate Plato by thinking as he thought.
But Jesus’ teaching is different. His teaching is a sign that points beyond
His teaching, to the top of Mount Calvary.
Jesus’ death on the Cross fulfilled His life as the divine
Prophet. Everything Jesus taught,
in public or private—from the Beatitudes to the High Priestly Prayer that He
offered at the Last Supper—is shown, exemplified, and fulfilled by Jesus’
act of self-sacrifice on the Cross. But
that sort of perfect self-sacrifice only wearies men and women, if they
try to imitate Jesus’ self-sacrifice only through their own human
strength.
+ + +
This is why Jesus gave His followers the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass on Holy Thursday evening:
to offer His disciples—through all the centuries to come—the gift
of His self-sacrifice on Calvary. Jesus
isn’t just an historical figure to imitate. Jesus is the eternal God, who offers
us His life, so that we can offer our lives in
self-sacrifice. Without the
strength of Jesus’ Body and Blood, soul and divinity, it is impossible
to follow Jesus’ teachings. Jesus on
Calvary proclaims that human nature alone is impotent and empty—that human life
is impotent and empty—without God, who showers His grace upon us through
the Cross.
All of this is reflected in the very structure of
Holy Mass. As the Mass proceeds, you
ascend to its summit, just as on Good Friday the crowds ascended Mount
Calvary. We see during the celebration
of Holy Mass that there are three stations where the priest and others stop
and stand, reflecting the Church’s members carrying out the roles of shepherd,
prophet, and priest.
The first station is symbolized by the
priest’s chair, where he acts in the role of shepherd. He gathers God’s flock together: one of the first examples is a ritual of
penance. Then, a few minutes later, the
priest through the prayer known as the Collect “collects” or folds all of our individual
intentions and prayers into the single prayer that the priest offers to
God, so that all of us together will be ready for both the Liturgy of the Word,
and the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
The second station of Holy Mass is the
pulpit. Here the second baptismal role
is carried out: the role of prophet. This role is exercised by the laypersons who
act as the lectors and cantors of the first three Scripture passages. But the final Scripture passage that’s
proclaimed is from the gospel accounts, where Jesus Himself acts and
speaks. In the Old Testament, Jesus is foreshadowed. In the writings of the Apostles, Jesus is
spoken about. But in the gospel
accounts, Jesus Himself acts for us and speaks to us, and all His
words and actions point us in one direction: onward to Calvary.
The altar is the third station of Holy
Mass. The actions that take place at the
first and second stations lead us to the altar. The altar is the sanctuary’s “center of
gravity”, if you will. The Word of God
that is proclaimed during the Liturgy of the Word becomes Flesh during the
Liturgy of the Eucharist.
In our Church’s sanctuary here at St. Mark’s, we
can literally see this. The altar of
sacrifice is in the center of our sanctuary.
Closer to the people, and to either side of the altar, are the first
station—the priest’s chair—and the second station—the pulpit. The fact that this altar stands in the center
visually highlights its importance.
Let me describe for you, though, a very different Catholic parish.
For the last four years of seminary formation,
Bishop Gerber sent (now “Father”) Sam Pinkerton and me to Chicago. Like any large city, Chicago has its share of
parishes where things went off the rails after the Second Vatican Council. Even in the early ’90’s, there were still
parishes afflicted by ideas that had nothing to do with the teachings of
Vatican II. One day, a group of us
seminarians stumbled upon a Catholic church whose exterior architecture should
have warned us about what the inside would look like.
In the stripped-down sanctuary, with white walls
and no statues, the altar was not in the center. The altar and the pulpit were equidistant
from the center, like two eyes on the front of a person’s face. The altar itself was “unique” because it had
the tabernacle built inside it:
you had to reach down to take the Blessed Sacrament from the
tabernacle. At the side of the altar
burned a red sanctuary lamp. On the
other side of the sanctuary was the pulpit.
On the front of the pulpit, at the top, was a recessed stand on which
rested a copy of the Holy Bible. To the
side of the pulpit burned… a red sanctuary lamp.
You might be tempted to ask, “What’s wrong with
this picture?” Of course, practically
speaking, it would take less time to answer the question, “What’s right
with this picture?” But to focus on one
problem related to the baptismal role of prophet: the architecture of the sanctuary, in placing
the pulpit and altar equidistant from the center, suggests that the pulpit and
altar are equal, and so also that the Liturgy of the Word and the
Liturgy of the Eucharist are equal, and so also that the Word of God and
the Word of God made Flesh are equal in significance. Through authentic Catholic worship, however, we
see that the Word of God chooses not only to speak to us, but also to
become Flesh for us. In fact, He speaks
to us so that we might be ready to receive His Presence in the
Eucharist.
But why? Why
is the Word of God made Flesh on the altar at Holy Mass? In the words of the Creed, the Word of God
becomes Flesh “for us men and for our salvation”. Jesus instituted the Sacrament of the
Eucharist so that when you, as Jesus’ disciple, share in the Body and Blood,
soul and divinity of Jesus, you will have the strength to offer the sacrifice
that God calls you to make every day in your vocation, and in your
stewardship through St. Mark’s.
Your time, talent, and treasure are gifts of
stewardship only if they are sacrificial gifts, in imitation of Jesus. For example, the time that you—adults
and children—give, should not be the surplus time in your schedule,
which you give once more important concerns like sports and work are taken care
of: instead, the time you give to your
parish must be a sacrifice of time, and that means that you give
something else up in sacrifice. Likewise,
the talent that you—adults and children alike—give, should not be only a
giving of your best talents. A
sacrifice of talent also involves giving yourself to doing things that you may
not seem to be very talented at.
Just as we grow interpersonally and psychologically when we “stretch”
ourselves, so we also grow spiritually.
And of course, the treasure that you—adults, teenagers, and
children alike—give to your parish must be a sacrificial gift: this means, as Monsignor McGread always says,
that you give from a need inside yourself to give, rather than giving
for a need outside yourself in the parish or diocese. Where is the need? The need for giving is inside yourself,
not outside.
We are here—each of us—as members of the Body of
Christ. Just as any human body has
different members with different roles to play, so the Church is the Body of
Christ, where each member has a vocation lived out in a unique “corner” of the
world. The entire Mystical Body
of Christ—throughout history and throughout the world—is nourished by the one
Sacrament of the Eucharist. This
sacrament is the strength God gives us to imitate the Sacrifice that becomes present
at the altar: the Sacrifice that Jesus
offered on Mount Calvary as our High Priest, Good Shepherd, and King of Kings.
