Christ for Christians: The beginning and end

This is the final Sunday of the liturgical year. and the readings concern the end of time and Christ’s role as King and Judge.

Next Sunday, we begin a new liturgical year with Advent, and a preparation for the birth of Jesus on Christmas, and a new beginning. The Gospel of St. Matthew of the Last Judgment asks us to see the face of Jesus in those in need and to pray for the courage and grace to respond to them. The challenge in faith is to realize it is not enough to believe in Jesus — we need to act in His name! We need to daily continue to be formed, as builders of the Kingdom of God and to take to heart the words of the Gospel, to care for one another as brothers and sisters in the Lord. The 23 Psalm is for all of us to realize, “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want” and to make that real.

In 1925, Pope Pius XI realized the need to state in a papal encyclical that all people were to give their first allegiance to Jesus Christ and not to earthly power. Christ will weigh his followers and treatment of their neighbors in need. The birth of Jesus signifies that He would be a humble, peacemaking, loving king; He was born in a crude stable placed in a wooden manager and warmed by farm animals. His end and coronation as King came on a cross, from jeering, not cheering crowds that followed Him to Calvary. There were not trumpets and horns of joy, pride and power to welcome Him, but the sound of hammering of nails, causing the king to writhe in agony. Jesus the King was born in poverty and humility, and died proclaiming “The greatest commandment is to love God and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus Christ the King commands us as followers at every Eucharist to “do this in memory of me.”

As a nation, we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, and we are challenged to stop and be grateful to God and one another for what we have as a country. It is a time for quiet prayer, to know we have lived through wars, recession, depression, and we have survived them. We have seen good and bad times. We have lived with a positive spirit as well as a with a negative, condemning and criticizing spirit. Our challenge is to thank God for who we are and, as a person, ask, “What can I do for making my nation a better place during this difficult time?” God has blessed us beyond measure in so many ways. Let us ask for humility and gentleness to bare more lovingly with one another and forever to be thankful for the gift of our nation.

After nearly a hundred years since Pope, cynicism, sarcasm, materialism, rationalism are all around and over us all with the big “I” in IT. We see so many TV shows of judges sitting in a courtroom handling our punishments on this disease. However, at the end of time, these will not be the criteria for Jesus as judge of those worthy of heaven. It will be the love that is in us, the active love for God and Neighbor that will determine whether our eternity will be face-to-face with the God of Love.

Now is the acceptable

time to work on that love and not regret that we threw away our life and time that God gives us the opportunity to know Him in prayer and to love Him and others.

St. Paul, in our second reading, was on his way to Damascus to arrest and persecute Christians. Jesus appeared to him in a blinding light and Paul asked him who He was. Jesus answered, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

What Paul was doing to Jesus’ followers, he was doing to Jesus Himself; a powerful image and one that has inspired many saints to reach out to others and we must do the same. Strive, this final week of the church year, to see the face of Jesus in others.