Friends, welcome to Word on Fire, Catholic Ministries. Word on Fire is an apostolate dedicated

to the mission of evangelization, using media both old and new to share the faith on every

continent, and to facilitate and encounter with Christ and His Church. The efforts of

Word on Fire engage the culture and bring the transformative power of God's Word where

it is most needed. Today we invite you to join Bishop Robert Baron, as he preaches

the gospel and shares the warmth and light of Christ with each of us.

Peace be with you. Friends, we celebrate as the very last Sunday of the liturgical year,

the Feast of Christ the King. I think perhaps the way that a king would come last in a great

formal procession. Think of a procession into Westminster Abbey, you know, the king

or the queen would come last. So this feast comes as a kind of culminating moment of the

Church year. What I want to do in this sermon today is explore three dimensions of Christ's

kingship, inspired by each of our three readings for today. So three different ways of looking

at what this means. You know, right away, I've said this before, but we Americans and we

Westerners in general tend to react against the idea of kingship. We don't really like kings.

You know, we got rid of a king and established a presidency in our country and we have elections,

et cetera, et cetera. But there's something very important that Christ is called not a president,

but a king. And let me try to get at that now by looking at three different themes from these

readings. First reading is taken from the second book of Samuel. And that's a text rather a

dear to my heart because I dedicated actually a few years of my life to reading it very carefully.

I wrote a commentary on two Samuel. The setting is he, Brian, a city in the southern section of

ancient Israel. That's where David had set up his strongholds. So during the long civil war with

Saul and the family of Saul, David consolidates his power, attracts to himself a number of kind

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