Christ the King

The Kingship of Christ is not a kingship of power. It's majesty is in its holiness, its concern for the other. The readings depict Christ our King as a shepherd, and members of his kingdom are, in the words of Matthew 25, those who see our Lord in our fellow human beings. At the mass I went to (in Wisconsin) the homilist thoughtfully contrasted Christ's domain with His rejection of the temptations to power offered by the devil.

Levinas cites Matthew 25 as showing the Christian recognition of our core human responsibility: to answer the call of the other for our care and consideration. Here is what he says in an interview in Is It Righteous to Be? at p. 52:

"Q.: Concretely, how is the responsibility for the other translated?

"E.L.: The other concerns me in all his material misery. It is a matter, eventually, of nourishing him, of clothing him. It is exactly the biblical assertion: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, give shelter to the shelterless. The material side of man, the material life of the other, concerns me and, in the other, takes on for me an elevated signification and concerns my holiness. Recall in Mattew 25, Jesus' 'You have hunted me, you have pursued me.' 'When have we hunted you, when have we pursued you?' the virtuous ask Jesus. Reply: when you 'refused to feed the poor,' when ou hunted down the poor, when you were indiffernt to him! As if, with regard to the other, I had responibilities starting from eating and drinking. And as if the other whom I hunted were equivalent to a hunted God. This holiness is perhaps but the holiness of a social problem. All the problems of eating and drinking, insofar as they concern the other, become sacred."

Levinas goes on to say:

"Ethically I cannot say that the other does not concern me. The political order -- institutions and justice -- relieve this incessant responsibility, but for the political order, for the good political order, we are still responsible. If one thinks this to the limit, one can say that I am responsible for the death of the other. I cannot leave him alone to die, even if I cannot stop it. This is how I have always interpreted the 'Thou shalt not kill.' 'Thou shall not kill' does not signify merely the interdiction against pulnging a knife into the breast of the neighbor. Of course, it signifies that, too. But so many ways of being comport a way of crushing the other. No doubt I cite the Bible too much. Let us cite Pascal's admirable formula: 'This is my place in the sun, the usurpation of the whole earth begins here.' In this sentence of Pascal, by the simple claiming of a place in the sun, I have already usurped the earth."

Our homilist didn't mention Matthew 25 in his exhortation to recognize Christ as King in our lives. But Matthew 25, as Levinas explains, is central to understanding what Christ's kingship means.

Listen to "Servant Song"

Listen to "You Are My Life" (World Youth Day 2011)

Listen to "Servant Song" (World Youth Day 2008)

Listen to Songs of World Youth Days.