I have noticed that society spends a great deal of time attacking and criticizing their leaders. Leaders are blamed for every poor decision or good decision they make. It is not a surprise that few people get into politics. I have also noticed that it is easy to make a mess and very hard to clean one up. What does this have to do with the Solemnity of Christ the King? It seems that we expect our leaders to be great, to be perfect with no character flaws, yet, we find out they are not any different than the rest of us. They are broken, wounded individuals. They get angry, they have addictions, they have pasts. They act out of their woundedness. We are somehow shocked that we have elected another broken individual. The only way someone can appear not to be broken is if the media basically leaves them alone and doesn’t look too closely. If there is someone who the media hates, but they don’t seem to be able to go after, you have a pretty virtuous person. What do this have to do with Christ the King? Well, it shows me that when we see leadership we want to see Christ in them. We want to see perfection. We want to see someone who really cares and has our best interests at heart and yet we see this failing over and over again.
This is why Christ should be the only real King in our lives. We desire this sort of King, let us enthrone Him. Our leaders – we need to pray for them because they are not Christ. I once met a man who told me he was Jesus. After a long talk, he asked me to pray for him. I said, “Sorry Jesus is the one person I don’t have to pray for,” so he gave me his real name at that point.
Yes, we need to pray for our leaders because they are weak and it is true that some serve for their own selfish ambitions but many serve because they want to make a positive change. We must pray and love them. We can correct them but remember they are fragile people as well. But by making Christ the King, we can have great freedom, even under disordered leadership. We can love because our King loves us. We can pray for others because we know our King has it figured out and knows how to make things work for the greatest possible good.
How do we put this King in charge? We choose to. He is the one King that is invited. His kingdom is not of this world, which means we have to invite His rule and we do that by entering into the other world and that is through prayer. Each day, and often several times a day, we feel ourselves drawn into the lower kingdom of vengeance, gossip, hatred, slander, lust, greed, judgement, self condemnation and fear. We must turn back to our King and pray for the souls that are standing out to us. Love the people that are hurting us and once again we will be back into the Kingdom that is not of this world. There will always be a daily and moment by moment battle. One of the battles will be to stay in the present moment of our lives and not be drawn into the past or the future. “What can I do right now? What is really affecting me in this moment?” are questions of the Kingdom. The second thing to know about the Kingdom of Heaven is that the King is always calling. That person who is affecting you is God calling you to pray and love. The Kingdom of the world is calling us to judge, lust, hate, objectify, see as a problem and a vexation in our life. See the Kingdom of Heaven, the kingship of Christ, is simple but against our nature, and the more wounded our nature, the more against. The Kingdom of Heaven invites us to love, which always means pray. I encourage you to do that. Each time someone is called to mind for any reason, negative especially, pray for them and you will have brought the Kingdom of Christ into the world. Forget to pray, refuse to pray and you will bring the Kingdom of the world and enthrone it. The poor soul that you were meant to be Christ to will walk away more wounded and hurt and sad, feeling affirmed that they are not lovable.
You see, we have the power to bring the Kingdom of God to the world, into our lives. Evil doesn’t have to reign. God can reign, love can reign and true peace can reign. The Kingdom of Jesus is not from this world, it is from above and inviting you and I to be its ambassadors.