Christ the King

Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

Bishop Robert Barron

Spirituality, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality:christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2010

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Our first reading for Mass this Sunday is taken from the opening chapter of Paul's letter to the Colossians. There is no stronger statement of the absolute primacy, centrality, and importance of Jesus Christ in the entire New Testament. Jesus, Paul tells us, is the beginning and the end, the icon of the invisible God, the one in whom all things exist and for whom they are destined. And then the Gospel shows us this cosmic King nailed to the cross. This wonderful irony is at the heart of the Christian proclamation: the King of the Universe is a crucified criminal, who utterly spends himself in love.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Cardinal Francis George. I invite you to join me for the next two minutes to reflect
0:09.0	with Father Robert Barron on the Word of God, which is the Word on Fire. Word on Fire Catholic
0:14.2	Ministries is a non-profit ministry at the forefront of Catholic evangelization, using
0:18.9	new media to spread the faith and every continent. Father Barron challenges us to open our hearts
0:23.9	to the Word on Fire, which is God's Word of Love for each of us. If our hearts are open,
0:29.5	the Lord can change and transform us so that we might speak with love about the one who
0:34.6	is love. The global benefactors of Word on Fire with the support of the Archdiocese of
0:39.4	Chicago now present Word on Fire. Peace be with you. Friends, we come today to the end of
0:48.0	a liturgical year. We come to the feast of Christ the King. It is though the church every
0:53.7	year at the end of a liturgical cycle wants to remind us that Jesus Christ is the Lord, that
1:00.2	Jesus Christ is the King. Everything we've set about Him, everything we've celebrated in connection
1:05.8	with Him is meant to conduce to this point. That we recognize Him as the King of our lives, the one
1:12.4	to whom absolute obedience and allegiance do. Jesus, Curios, Jesus, Lord, Paul's form of the
1:20.2	Karigma were reminded at the end of every liturgical year. That's what it's about. I've spoken
1:27.3	before about the irony, the poetry, even the jest, which can be found at the heart of Christianity.
1:35.2	Chesterton said that a jest comes from this juxtaposition of opposites in congruous things coming
1:42.4	together to make us laugh. So Christ the King is another expression of this sublime sacred jest.
1:53.2	Why? Well, this Lord, this King, this one who gets every ounce of our allegiance,
2:03.9	is someone who never had political office, never had a great academic degree, never wielded cultural
2:14.3	influence, and who died at the age of 30 or so on a terrible instrument of torture. Christ is
2:23.6	the King. The King is Christ. Bringing those two things together is the jest, the sublime incongruity,
2:33.4	upon which all of Christianity rests. You know, if we stress one side or the other, we're going to
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