23 November 2025 - Feast of Christ the King

2 Samuel 5:1-3; Col 1:12-20; Luke 23:35-43

Homily

The Feast of Christ the King was established at a time when the Church, still shunning the republics that were then being established in the Western world, retained a nostalgia for the monarchies that were disappearing.

And yet the king presented to us in today's Gospel has none of this triumphalism. He is not dressed in sumptuous clothes and does not sit on a throne of velvet cushions embroidered with gold. He is a naked king, enthroned on a cross. The people, to whom he has always shown only the goodness of his Father, stand there watching, stunned, not knowing what to think or what to say. Above his head is a sarcastic sign, written by the Roman occupiers, saying, "This is the King of the Jews! " And all those who speak do so to mock him. All except one.

The leaders of the Jewish people, as well as the Roman soldiers and the first of the two thieves, invite Him to save Himself and come down from the cross. As if He had come to save Himself and not to save us! They have understood nothing.

Only one person in this story understood. A poor criminal, fully aware of his status, who bears no grudge against those who tied him to the cross, since he recognises that he is receiving the just reward for the crimes he has committed. Having nothing to lose, he has everything to gain. He does not ask to be saved from death. He does not ask to be miraculously taken down from his cross.

He is aware of the enormous distance between himself and Jesus, since Jesus, as he reminds his companion, has done nothing wrong, whereas they are getting what they deserve. At the same time, he is completely at ease with Jesus, who has accepted the same fate as him, and – something unheard of in the Gospel – he speaks to him with great familiarity, marked by tenderness, using his own name, Jesus. What does he ask for? Simply that Jesus remember him when He returns to His kingdom. He obviously has no idea what that kingdom will be like, nor when Jesus will return.

In his reply, Jesus makes another of His great revelations about the nature of the Kingdom of God – the Kingdom He has been proclaiming throughout His preaching. ‘Today,’ He says, ‘you will be with me in paradise.’ United in death, they will be united in Life. If we combine this revelation with another made by Jesus at another time: ‘The Kingdom of God is among you,’ we understand that the Kingdom of God is fully realized in the person of Jesus, and that it is being realized, even now, in all those who are united with Jesus in faith, love and hope.

The king who is presented to us on the cross has nothing to do with the potentates of this world, who generally impose their power through violence. Not only does He never resort to violence, but He does not even ask for divine vengeance to descend upon His persecutors. On the contrary, He implores mercy for them: ‘Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.’ He is a free man. And, remarkably in this Gospel of Luke, the second thief, the one called the ‘good thief,’ is also a free man.

A modern psychologist, Erich Fromm, in a book entitled ‘The Fear of Freedom’, showed how human beings, when confronted with their existential loneliness, when they perceive themselves as beings distinct from and separate from all others, often oscillate between two pathological attitudes. The first is to merge with others by exercising power over them; the second is to renounce one's freedom in a fusional dependence on whoever exercises power.

God having revealed Himself on the cross, in Jesus of Nazareth, not as the all-powerful Other, but as the close and powerless Other, the good thief was able to overcome his ‘fear of freedom’. He was able to be totally free while being attached to the cross, and to enter into conversation with Jesus, his God, in extraordinary freedom and serenity.

May this same Jesus reign in each of our hearts, free us from our own ‘fear of freedom,’ and enable us to attain a freedom that can at least come somewhat close to that of the thief crucified beside Him.

Armand Veilleux