Viva Cristo Rey
Solemnity of Christ the King. Fr Toby Lees preaches on the freedom to be found in accepting Christ as our King.
David Foster Wallace was perhaps the most brilliant writer of his generation. He was also a man tortured by not just his own genius, but also his addictions. These latter though seemed to help him see less obvious forms of slavery and so he was exasperated by the simulataneous naivety and cynicism of a society that thought it had outgrown worship of God, but had instead descended into unthinking idolatry. There’s a passage from his most famous speech, ‘This is Water’, a commencement address given at Kenyon College on the purposes of a liberal education, which I keep coming back to again and again:
Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
In recent weeks I have been reflecting on Radio Maria England about the premature death of Liam Payne, one of the members of the band, One Direction, which was, for about six years, the biggest boyband in the world. As you may have read, Liam fell off a balcony in Buenos Aires, having either jumped or fainted under the influence of a toxic mix of drugs and booze. Tragically, in the final hours of his life he had been seen wondering the hotel lobby, asking strangers, ‘Do you know who I am?’ And they remembered him not. He was set up by a corrosive industry as an idol, and he couldn’t cope with the fame and he couldn’t cope without it. He had been worshipped, and it had been unbearable, and he in turn, it seems, had worshipped being famous and it had been unsustainable. Before he fell from that balcony he had been eaten alive by the false gods Foster Wallace warned against.
The Kingship of Christ has been cast by some – and tragically used by some – as oppressive. But it should be, it is, in fact, liberating. Christ being King means that I do not have to be, Christ being King means that no mere human is proposed for my worship only to disappoint me.
The Kingship of Christ gives life a new and transcendent orientation. His Kingship extends into this world, but it is not of this world. And when we cease to look to this world for our ultimate fulfilment, a burden lifts, and the yoke is easy. Why might that be? Well, for as long as I look to the things of this world to fulfil me, I must hold on to them. Once they are freed from that burden of expectation for me, I can give them away, which is the true Christian test of a possession. Some have found such liberation in Christ the King that the gifts they could give away were not just money or talents, but life its very self.
‘¡Viva Cristo Rey!’ was the final confession on the lips of Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro, one of a number martyrs of the Cristeros war. He was not a resistance fighter but a Catholic priest of great wit and real courage who ran an underground ministry during this time.
In 1927, Father Miguel was sentenced to death without due trial on sham charges for the attempted assassination of Mexico’s former president, President Álvaro Obregón. In reality, he was arrested and killed for nothing more than being a faithful Catholic priest.
Photographs of his execution were ordered by President Calles and were intended to show the cowardly death of a Catholic priest. Ironically, what has been seared into the memory of Mexican Catholics is the very opposite of what Calles intended. If you look at them you’ll see a man with all the self-possession, all the serenity that Jesus displays in the encounter with Pilate in our Gospel.
We might be tempted to translate ‘Viva Cristo Rey’ as ‘Long live Christ the King’, but that wouldn’t be quite right, these words are not the expression of a wish, such as when we say, ‘God save the King!’ rather they are a statement of fact, a statement of faith, ‘Christ the King, He lives!’
And it’s this reality that crowns the end of our liturgical year: Christ the King lives; He has always lived; and He will always live! And if we live in Him, we’ll find freedom, because we’ll cease to be slaves to created things, and instead know the freedom of the friendship He calls us into.
Readings: Daniel 7:13-14 | Apocalypse 1:5-8 | John 18:33-37
Image: the execution of Fr Miguel Agustín Pro (unknown photographer, public domain)
