|
Other Articles by Fr. Roger Landry |
|
| Reflections on the End of the Church Year | |
We have come to the culmination of the Church's whole liturgical year. During the past fifty-one weeks, we have been on pilgrimage through time. Our journey began with the Jewish people in the expectation of the Messiah. Then we celebrated the Messiah's birth, epiphany, presentation in the temple, baptism and hidden life. We joined Jesus in the desert for forty days.
With the help of St. Mark's Gospel, we followed Him during His three years of public ministry. We took out our palm branches and sang hosanna to Him. We joined Him in the Upper Room as He inaugurated Holy Orders and the Mass. On Good Friday, we shamefully relived our calls for His crucifixion (which we reiterate each time we sin). We celebrated the most important event in world history on April 16th when we rejoiced in His resurrection and stayed with Him for the next forty days until His Ascension.
We prayed with Mary for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Then we entered into the time of the Church, "ordinary time," in which we're called to focus on our mission to continue what the early Church started. In the month of November, as we neared the end of the pilgrimage, we began to focus on the "last things." Today we come to the dramatic conclusion, the exclamation point, the finish line - and turn our attention to what will be the central reality at the end of time and into eternity. Then, we and every around us - every Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Jew, Buddhist and Hindu, atheist and agnostic - will recognize what we have been given the privilege in life to profess: that Jesus Christ is the King of the Universe.
Christ's kingdom is not just "coming" but is "at hand" and "among us" (Mk 1:15; Mt 12:28; Lk 17:21). It is not something toward which we should merely look in the future, but into which we're supposed to have entered already, since Christ has already inaugurated it. The King is already here, truly present in the Eucharist, and the best means is to love Him in the disguise of the Eucharist, like we would hope to love Him if we saw Him transfigured in glory.
But to do that, we need to have faith. We have to admit that it would be much easier for us to adore our King if He appeared to us in all His glory surrounded by the angels and the saints, but the Lord does not choose to manifest Himself to us in that way here on earth. Instead He wills to hide His majesty under His equally great humility. We see that obviously in the Eucharist, where His Divine Majesty cloaks Himself under the appearances of bread and wine and bids us to consume Him. But we see it, too, when before Pilate and the crowds, Christ's crown was made not of jewels but of thorns. The sign of His royalty was not a signet ring on His finger, but a hole straight through His hand. His throne was not made of marble but of two beams of intersecting wood. He was covered not in royal purple but in blood. Why did the Universal King divest Himself of His majesty and not only assume the humblest of appearances, but allow His creatures He Himself formed in the womb to manhandle Him in the way that they did on Calvary and have continued to do through the centuries?
"You were slaughtered and by your blood you have ransomed for God saints of every tribe and language, people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom of priests serving our God and they shall reign on the earth" (Rv 5:9-10). The term "priest" is being used generically here to describe one who makes sacrifices to God. Christ came to establish a kingdom of people who, like Him, offer their lives as a ransom for others, who desire not to be served, but to serve, who sacrifice themselves to for others' sanctification and salvation.