She is the head of state in 16 countries, from Canada in the west to Australia and New Zealand in the east, so effectively spanning the entire globe. She has an aircraft carrier named after her. Numerous places bear her name, like the newest and biggest hospital in Glasgow; there are even more which are indirectly connected to her, such as Aberdeen Royal<\/u> Infirmary. She has a number of palaces, castles and residences. She opens sessions of the British Parliament, meets the Prime Minister regularly, the law is promulgated in her name\u2026 This list could be very, very long. Based on those facts, Queen Elizabeth is among the most powerful people in the world! But is she? All those attributes of power are purely ceremonial. She is in fact so powerless that we don\u2019t know her opinion on virtually anything. Political decisions that have a real impact on our lives as individuals and collective are made by politicians; the Queen at best rubber-stamps them; I guess sometimes through gritted teeth, but we can\u2019t be sure of that \u2013 the poor monarch isn\u2019t allowed to express her opinions\u2026<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Queen Elizabeth can provide us with a perfect human example for today\u2019s solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe, and for a couple of reasons. One concerns those who are not Christians, the other one applies to those who identify themselves as such. Let\u2019s start with the former.<\/p>\n
Relatively often I come across opinions that question the effectiveness of Jesus Christ’s reign of peace. Those opinions are formed based on various philosophical or experiential grounds, but they share one common factor. The presence of suffering, or violence or any of the other unpleasant elements that happen to humankind seems to contradict the universal power of the Risen Christ. If He is the King of Peace, his reign is rather ineffective, isn\u2019t it? We\u2019ll come back to this shortly but now let\u2019s look at how Queen Elizabeth\u2019s reign reflects Jesus\u2019 power over Christians.<\/p>\n
More and more often I\u2019m being asked about a child\u2019s baptism or a Catholic wedding by people completely unknown to me. In the course of making arrangements, I usually find out that they don\u2019t practise their faith; in fact, it\u2019s not rare that their lifestyle contradicts their declared Catholic faith. But before we get smug about our own perfection as regular churchgoers, let\u2019s look first into the mirror. How often do we try to discern God\u2019s plans for ourselves? Do we ask him what we should do or how we should deal with certain challenges or problems? Or do we come up with our own plans and ideas and either ask him in prayer to rubber-stamp them or complain to God when they haven\u2019t worked out as expected? The Almighty\u2019s might has either very little or no practical influence over our lives, choices and decisions.<\/p>\n
In the conversation with Pilate in today\u2019s gospel, Jesus defined his reign in a very distinctive way: \u2018Mine is not a kingdom of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my men would have fought to prevent my being surrendered to the Jews. But my kingdom is not of this kind.\u2019<\/em> Those who question Jesus\u2019 power because there\u2019s still a lot of pain in the world have wrongly applied the earthly way of wielding power to His way of reigning. Many Christians make a similar mistake when we assume that Jesus\u2019 job as the King of the universe is to fulfil our<\/u> plans, dreams and whims. \u2018But His kingdom is not of this kind.\u2019<\/em> Jesus\u2019 kingship is neither political (in the broad sense of the word) nor servile. He wants to be enthroned in your life, not in a ceremonial way but an active and impactful one. That\u2019s what He meant when He said: \u2018all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.\u2019<\/em> Here\u2019s the definition of the verb \u2018to listen\u2019: \u2018to take notice of and act on what someone says; respond to advice or a request. To make an effort to hear something; be alert and ready to hear something.\u2019 (Oxford Languages)<\/em> Apply this to your relationship with Jesus and He will become the King of the universe, your universe.<\/p>\n Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She is the head of state in 16 countries, from Canada in the west to Australia and New Zealand in the east, so effectively spanning the entire globe. She has an aircraft carrier named after her. Numerous places bear her name, like the newest and biggest hospital in Glasgow; there are even more which are indirectly connected to her, such as Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. She has a number of palaces, castles and residences. She opens sessions of the British Parliament, meets the Prime Minister regularly, the law is promulgated in her name\u2026 This list could be very, very long. Based on those facts, Queen Elizabeth is among the most powerful people in the world! But is she? All those attributes of power are purely ceremonial. She is in fact so powerless that we don\u2019t know her opinion on virtually anything. Political decisions that have a real impact on our lives as individuals and collective are made by politicians; the Queen at best rubber-stamps them; I guess sometimes through gritted teeth, but we can\u2019t be sure of that \u2013 the poor monarch isn\u2019t allowed to express her opinions\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-b"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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