Message from Fr. Con

REFLECTION FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF CHRIST THE KING (YEAR C) Week beginning 20TH NOVEMBER 2022

This Sunday, we mark the great solemn feast of CHRIST THE KING. It always concludes the Sundays of the Church’s Year. It reminds us that the culmination of all things will be the glorious sight of Jesus Christ reigning eternally.
(This year, it equates with the 34th week of Ordinary Time in the Church’s Calendar. This great Feast also illustrates for us the real sense of structure in the Church’s Year. There are either 33 or maybe 34 weeks each year, comprising what is known as Ordinary Time. This calculation will depend on the date of Easter yearly – something that is determined by the moon and the tides). So, of a year’s 52 weeks, there will remain 18 or 19. These weeks comprise what we might well term ‘extraordinary time’ i.e. Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost etc. Thus, the Church Year is very structured indeed. Certainly, we should always maintain a humble thankful heart and mind towards God for the presence of such a structure. For such establishes for us an air of real stability in our lives – a real sense of order for us to grasp, in the living out of our discipleship.
The specific Feast of CHRIST THE KING should in itself fill us with a great spiritual joy. On the great day of our Baptism, we each received a share in His being PRIEST, PROPHET & KING. This happened immediately after the water part of our Baptism – when we were anointed with the sacred Chrism on the crown of our head. This anointing gave us a share in the priesthood of the laity, which is joined to the ministerial priesthood – both categories being joined under the leadership of Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest in Heaven.
We can see that the Church’s Year concludes pretty much exactly one month before the end of the calendar year. The former has, so to speak, beaten the latter to the finishing tape. May we ensure that, in our lives, our spiritual selves will always win out over our merely earthbound selves.