FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING
Homily of Pope Benedict XVI
Vatican
City, November 25, 2012 (VIS)
In
this final Sunday of the liturgical year, the Church invites us to celebrate
the Lord Jesus as King of the Universe. She calls us to look to the future,
or more properly into the depths, to the ultimate goal of history, which will be the definitive and
eternal kingdom of Christ. ... In the Gospel passage which we have just heard …
Pilate asks Jesus, 'Are you the King of the Jews?' In reply to this question,
Jesus clarifies the nature of His kingship and His Messiahship itself, which is
not worldly power but a love
which serves.
Jesus clearly had no political
ambitions. After the multiplication of the loaves, the people, enthralled by
the miracle, wanted to take Him away and make Him their king, in order to
overthrow the power of Rome and thus establish a new political kingdom that
would be considered the long-awaited kingdom of God. But Jesus knows that God’s kingdom is of a completely different
kind; it is not built on arms and violence. The multiplication of the
loaves itself becomes both the sign that He is the Messiah and a watershed in
His activity: henceforth the path to the Cross becomes ever clearer; there, in
the supreme act of love, the promised kingdom, the kingdom of God, will shine
forth. Jesus does not wish to be
defended by arms, but to
establish His kingdom not by armed conflict, but by the apparent
weakness of life-giving love. The kingdom of God is a kingdom utterly
different from earthly kingdoms.
"That is why, faced with a defenseless, weak and
humiliated man, as Jesus was, a man of power like Pilate is taken aback. So he
asks an apparently odd question: 'So you are a king?' But Jesus answers in the affirmative: 'You
say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the
world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my
voice'. Jesus speaks of kings and kingship, yet He is not referring to power
but to truth. Jesus came to reveal
and bring a new kingship, that of God; He came to bare witness to the truth
of a God Who is love. The power of the true Messiah, the power which will never pass away or be destroyed, is not the power of the kingdoms of
the earth which rise and fall, but the power of truth and love". To be disciples of Jesus,
then, means not letting ourselves be allured
by the worldly logic of power, but bringing into the world the light of
truth and God’s love. It is a pressing invitation addressed to each and
all: to be converted ever anew to the kingdom of God, to the lordship of God,
of Truth.
This means
working to bring out ever more clearly the priority
of God and His will over the interests of the world and its powers.
Therefore, become imitators of Jesus.
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