WelCom November 2024
Feast of Christ the King: Sunday, 24 November 2024
James B Lyons
What would you like to ask God? I put that question to some under ten-year olds at one of our schools. They were given time to think about it. Here are some of the results.
- 7-year-old: How many miracles have you done in your life?
- 4-year-old: How do you feel when somebody falls over?
- 5 years: What do you do in the rain?
- Two 9-year-olds: Why do sins happen? How does prayer get up to you?
Thoughtful, challenging questions. They show an easy relationship with God – a personal connection, and also a deepening faith. The older ones starting to think more deeply: Why do sins happen?
We’re created to ask why and what and where and who and how. Life is lived from question to question. We learn by questioning. And nearly all our questions have to do with finding our way in life: What’s my life about? What’s it for? Where’s it going?
Pilate has a question for Jesus: Are you the king of the Jews?
It’s a serious, probing question from a mind filled with anxiety, uncertainty: Who is this Jesus? Why is he causing such division? Why is he not afraid? Why am I so troubled about this case?
Pilate’s restlessness allows Jesus to identify himself. He takes Pilate’s question seriously and answers clearly: Yes, I am a king!
But Pilate can’t get much further. His understanding of kingship is modelled on his own culture where power is strength, not weakness. So, he can only conclude that Jesus is deluded. He feels sorry for him, but he can’t help him.
What questions do you have for Jesus? Especially relating to his claim to be king.
You and I have the advantage over Pilate, because we know more of the story.
We know the followers of Jesus were so convinced he came back to life after his crucifixion, that they overcame their fear to spread that conviction throughout the known world. They gave their own lives for that belief! All that must mean something!
The children’s questions, simple and honest, came out of their own young life experience. They really wanted to know.
But regardless of age, we can imitate the honesty of children and ask because we really want to know? And, like children, we ask those special questions only of those whose love and tenderness we trust. Our hearts tell us there’ll never be any need to fear the answers.
The Church celebrates the Feast of Christ the King, also called the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, on the last Sunday of the Liturgical year. The Feast was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925 with his encyclical Quas primas, to respond to a world that was rejecting Christ and was being dominated by secularism.