Christ the King - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2012

In the Gospel today, the Feast of the Kingship of Christ, Jesus accepted the title of King, but very explicitly he insisted that there is no fighting in his kingdom, no violence.  We like to consider ourselves disciples of that King.  But we all start off life with a strong propensity to violence; and unfortunately, the world we live in more or less takes it for granted – and that influences us, too.

This past week our TV screens have shown us the Israeli military and terrorist Hamas mindlessly killing each other.  The sad thing is that most of the victims are women and children, non-combatants - what generals and others refer to, heartlessly, as collateral damage.

Back home, our political leaders seem intent to persecute even further people fleeing persecution and hoping to find asylum in a nation that claims to be Christian.

The struggle to love anyone, everyone, seems beyond us.  Some manage it; most of us fail miserably.   So we die, still the unfinished product.

Today, as we gather in this peaceful cemetery, we remember and pray for those buried here.

We have a sound instinct in the Church to pray for those who have died.  We pray for those who are experiencing what we have come to call Purgatory.  Jesus, of course, never spoke explicitly of Purgatory; but some of the things he did say lead us to conclude that it is indeed real, and important, too. 

We usually associate Purgatory with suffering.  Sometimes that suffering has been interpreted as God's punishment for sin.  But our God of infinite and unconditional love does not punish.

The fact is that we die unfinished, imperfect.  We do love, but our love is almost always selective and restricted.  We love some, we ignore some, we even feel hostile about some.  Our love is also not complete, not thorough.  We rarely love with all our heart, mind and strength.  There is still a lot of self-interest, even hostility, in our hearts.  And then, even when at times we do love well, we don't do so consistently.

Purgatory would seem to be the opportunity to extend, to purify and to perfect our capacity to love.  We need to address our self-interest and hostility.  And that means letting-go, moving well beyond the comfort zone, facing our inertia and our fears.  That is a real dying to self.  It is painful; in some ways it is suffering.  But given, with death, a clear sense of the closeness of God, the wonder and the irresistible attractiveness of God, it is a process that we face, and that we willingly and eagerly want to undertake.

We don't grow in love in a vacuum.  We do it by doing it! – by loving.  So Purgatory would seem to be a finishing school - a situation where all those present reach out with ever more total love towards God, towards each other, and, we believe, towards us.  There would be no one abandoned, forgotten or alone in Purgatory.

We pray for them because our prayer is the expression of our love and care.  And all love, even our love [as we know] is encouraging, supportive and enabling.  What we call the Communion of Saints is something wonderful – people reaching out, supporting and empowering each other, on this side of the grave, and on the other side of the grave, as well, whether they are still "on the way" in Purgatory or are already "home and hosed" in Heaven.

As we gather today to celebrate Eucharist here in this charming rural setting, on the Feast of Christ the King, we effectively claim for ourselves and seek to share in the mysterious dynamic of Jesus' death and resurrection.  He died because he would not step back from his conviction that the only way to save this world of ours is to choose resolutely the way of love.   That is what his Kingdom was about.  That was the truth to which he bore witness [as today's Gospel reminded us], what he was born for, what he came into the world for… and to which we, too, witness in this peaceful country cemetery.