When Benedict XV died unexpectedly of pneumonia in 1922, Achille Ratti, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, was elected to the See of Peter. His election to the See of Peter came on the fourteenth ballot. It is said that when asked whether he accepted Ratti remained silent for several minutes. One Cardinal reportedly quipped that they had “put him through the fourteen Stations and then left him on Calvary”. He took the regnal name Pius XI and the motto Pax Christi in regno Christi … “The Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.” His motto signaled his program for a troubled world.
The royal families of Europe were falling one by one. Secularist atheistic materialism was on the rise. In the wake of the gory First World War, Pope Pius XI looked out over global chaos. Industrialization, imperialism, and entangled political alliances had produced slaughter on an unprecedented scale though trench warfare, modern artillery and poison gas. Millions were dead or maimed. Then came the Spanish Flu, taking millions more. Enlightened modern man, freed from the shackles of old religion, demonstrated remarkable ingenuity in devising new ways to kill.
Ratti had served as papal representative in Poland during the Polish-Soviet War, remaining at his post even when other diplomats fled. He understood Bolsheviks and had seen firsthand the fruits of their revolutionary ideology.
In his first encyclical, Ubi arcano (1922), Pius XI lamented that World War I had not brought peace and that new wars threatened. He deplored the conversion of churches to secular use and pointed to concupiscence as the root of societal ills. Only under the Kingship of Christ, he said, would there be true peace. Three years later, in Quas primas (11 December 1925), Pius established the Feast of Christ the King, fixing its celebration on the last Sunday of October, the month Communists dedicated to their “permanent revolution”, namely, pursue goals with no compromise with the opposition. That phrase, “permanent revolution”, which is coming into ominous vogue again today, was penned in 1844 by Karl Marx in a work diabolically called The Holy Family. The Devil always tells you what he is doing.
One wonders what Papa Ratti would make of our seemingly interminable ecclesiastical processes of reimagining, restructuring, and permanent walking together, with their listening sessions and conclusions that somehow always seem to require still more listening sessions. “Permanent process” has a certain uncompromising revolutionary ring to it.
In any event, by placing Christ the King on the final Sunday of October, Pius XI situated the feast immediately before All Saints, All Souls and the month of November when Mother Church directs our attention toward the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. November dovetails with Advent and its expectation of the glorious return of the Lord. Christ’s universal sovereignty, the triumph of His saints, the purification of the departed, and the judgment awaiting every soul are brought by the Feast into a close liturgical harmony. The Church gives us a mini-season within the “green time” for getting our priorities straight before moving again to penitential violet.
The Epistle for the Feast of Christ the King, Colossians 1:12-20, provides the theological foundation for what Pius XI wanted the feast to teach. Writing to the Christians of Colossae in Asia Minor, St. Paul gives us what many scholars regard as an early Christian hymn. Perhaps Paul composed it himself. However, song is very useful in instruction. Surely Paul had standard tools he employed in his evangelization and training of those he would leave behind to continue the work.
Brethren: [We give] thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col 1:12-20, RSV)
Notice the repeated emphasis on all things. All things created through Him. All things created for Him. All things held together in Him. All things reconciled through Him.
Not some. All.
In that passage, the Apostle to the Gentiles takes us from creation to redemption, from Christology to ecclesiology, from the invisible heavenly powers to the visible Church, from the forgiveness of sins to the peace accomplished through the Blood of the Cross.
The expression “image of the invisible God” deserves attention. Man was created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-27), but in Christ we encounter the eternal Son, the perfect image of the Father. The Greek word is eikōn, “image,” whence we have “icon.” Christ is the new Adam, the beginning of a new creation, all while remaining consubstantial with the Father, eternal God. St. Hilary of Poitiers in his De Trinitate develops the relationship between the Father and His perfect Image, the Son. The invisible Son, eternally begotten of the invisible Father, became the perfect visible image of the invisible Father in the Incarnation. Thus, Our Lord could say to Philip: “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)
Christ reveals the Father because He possesses the same divine nature. The Word through whom creation came into existence took to Himself a human nature in order to restore fallen creation to its proper end.
Hence, we have a grounding for the Feast of Christ the King.
Christ’s sovereignty arises from His Divine Person and extends over the entire created order. His humanity, united hypostatically to the Word, shares in His royal dignity. His Kingdom encompasses both the visible and invisible, the spiritual and the temporal, the individual soul and the entirety of the society in which that soul lives.
Pius XI was emphatic about this. In Quas primas 17, he wrote:
“It would be a grave error… to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power.”
Be they civil affairs, the doings of the public square, governments, nations, schools, workplaces, families, every human institution, Christ is King over them all.
This does not mean that the Church must administer every government or that the Gospel supplies the sole political constitution. Legitimate temporal authority has its proper role. Nevertheless, political authority remains subject to the natural and divine law. No human legislature can make intrinsically evil conduct good by voting for it. No matter how many times they vote for it. We are reminded that, as St. Augustine taught, states and government are both a punishment for sin and a remedy against it.
In Quas primas 1, Pius XI recalled that the world’s disorders arose because men had expelled Christ and His law from both private life and public affairs. Peace among nations could never be secure while individuals and states rejected His sovereignty.
Look around.
When God is removed from the moral equation, human dignity eventually becomes negotiable, indeed, negatable. The individual is reduced to a unit of production, an inconvenience, or an obstacle to the glorious future promised by whichever ideology happens to command the machinery of the state and the media. The notorious omelet or soufflé metaphor associated with revolutionary politics comes to mind. As the monster Lenin quipped, to make the omelet eggs must after all be broken. Under totalitarian regimes, human beings are the eggs, broken by the millions.
Speaking of broken eggs, I recall a meme of a smiling woman who posted, “Think of socialism like a fancy baked good. Just because many have made a mess of their kitchen attempting it, doesn’t mean you go around declaring you’ll never eat soufflé again! It just means you try harder!” To which some wag replied with a black-and-white photo of soldiers standing over charred skulls and bones: “Oh no! I burned the soufflé again.”
The grim joke exposes the dark fruit of utopian ideologies. When Christ is not King, over and over again humanity burns.
Pius XI understood that socialism, as a comprehensive materialist ideology, represented a profound challenge to the Christian understanding of man. In his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo anno 120, he declared:
“Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”
He distinguished legitimate concerns for social justice from a theory of society incompatible with Christian anthropology. The same encyclical defended just wages, the rights of workers, the family, and the principle of subsidiarity.
In par. 121, Pius warned of a new form of socialist activity directed particularly toward education and the formation of character. Its promoters sought to reshape society by reshaping the minds of its members, especially the young.
Does that sound familiar?
After generations of ideological programming in education and popular culture, we daily encounter people who know no history, nothing of civics, and nevertheless parrot inexhaustible certainties about how everyone else should live. Independent reasoning has become suspicious. Media driven slogans substitute for arguments.
Against this stands the Christian proclamation that every human person is created in the image of God and redeemed by the Precious Blood of Christ.
That brings us back to Colossians.
Paul thanks the Father who has transferred us from the dominion of darkness into the Kingdom of His beloved Son. There is a movement here, an exodus from slavery into freedom, from sin into grace.
Think about waking in the middle of the night in a completely dark room. Even though you know the furniture, you grope about hesitantly, extending your hands to avoid obstacles. Then you find the switch.
BAM! Light.
There is relief, recognition, the sudden restoration of perspective.
Something analogous happens when a soul, having been in mortal sin, finally approaches the confessional with contrition and receives absolution. The darkness is dispelled by sanctifying grace. The soul is restored to friendship with God and to the life of His Kingdom.
The Kingdom of Christ must take possession of our hearts if it is to transform our homes, institutions, and nations. Public profession without personal conversion becomes hollow. Yet personal conversion has public consequences, because Christians carry their faith into everything they do.
The Collect of the traditional Mass expresses this beautifully:
Omnípotens sempitérne Deus,
qui in dilécto Fílio tuo, universórum Rege,
ómnia instauráre voluísti:
concéde propítius;
ut cunctae famíliae géntium,
peccáti vúlnere disgregátae,
eius suavissímo subdántur império.
Almighty eternal God,
who in Your beloved Son, the King of the whole universe,
desired to reestablish all things:
propitiously grant
that all the families of the nations,
separated by the wound of sin,
may be brought under His most sweet sovereignty.
Omnia instaurare … “to restore, reestablish, bring all things into their proper order”. Compare Ephesians 1:10 where St. Paul speaks of gathering up all things in Christ.
The prayer names the origin of problems of this fallen world: peccáti vúlnere “by the wound of sin.” Sin wounds and divides the famíliae gentium “the families of the nations”. The Church asks that these wounded peoples be subjected to Christ’s suavissimum imperium, “His most sweet sovereignty”. Imperium is a strong word. It indicates “command, authority, sovereignty”. Yet it is qualified by suavissimum, the superlative of suavis, “sweet, agreeable, gracious”.
Christ’s authority is supreme, and His yoke is sweet (cf. Matt 11:30). The King whose dominion embraces the cosmos is the same King who wears a crown of thorns.
Now consider the Collect of the Novus Ordo solemnity:
Almighty eternal God,
who desired to renew all things in Your beloved Son, the King of the universe,
graciously grant that the whole of creation,
having been freed from servitude,
may zealously serve Your majesty
and praise You greatly without end.
Both prayers proclaim Christ’s universal sovereignty and the restoration of creation. Both are orthodox. Their emphases, however, differ significantly.
In the original Collect, the nations are explicitly named, sin is identified as the wound dividing them, and their submission to Christ’s sovereignty is petitioned. In the newer Collect, the language is more broadly cosmic. Creation is freed from servitude and directed toward everlasting praise. The social and political specificity of the original has disappeared.
The placement of the feast reinforces the difference of emphasis. The Vetus Ordo calendar proclaims the present social Kingship of Christ as the Church approaches All Saints and the commemorations of the departed. The Post-Conciliar calendar situates the solemnity at the conclusion of the liturgical year, emphasizing the final manifestation of Christ’s Kingdom when God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).
Both dimensions belong to Catholic doctrine. Christ reigns now, and His Kingdom will be manifested in consummate glory at His return. Nevertheless, the change in language and placement changes what is stressed in the minds of the faithful.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
The law of prayer and the law of belief are intimately related. What Catholics repeatedly hear and pray forms their theological imagination. Change the content of prayer and, over time, the emphases of belief and practice change as well.
We are our rites.
The Postcommunion of the traditional Mass makes the practical consequences especially vivid:
Immortalitátis alimóniam consecúti,
quaesumus, Dómine:
ut, qui sub Christi Regis vexíllis militáre gloriámur,
cum ipso, in caelésti sede, iúgiter regnáre possímus.
Having received the nourishment of immortality,
we beseech Thee, O Lord,
that we who glory in fighting beneath the banners of Christ the King
may reign with Him forever upon His heavenly throne.
An extraordinary prayer.
We have received immortalitátis alimóniam, “the nourishment of immortality”, the Eucharist. Fed with Christ’s own Body and Blood, we beg to persevere beneath His royal standards, sub Christi Regis vexíllis, until we reign with Him in Heaven.
This is the Church Militant. This is spiritual combat. There is the Eucharist as nourishment for the journey and strength for the battle. There is the final victory toward which every Christian life must be directed.
Compare the newer Postcommunion:
O Lord, we entreat you,
may your sacramental mysteries
perfect in us that which they contain,
with the result that what we are now performing in outward appearance,
we may grasp in the truth of things.
A sound sacramental petition, certainly. Yet the imagery of banners, battle, and heavenly enthronement has vanished.
Some criticize the traditional liturgy for dwelling excessively on sin, guilt, penance, propitiation, and spiritual warfare. They prefer an emphasis on hope, joy, and the fulfillment of creation.
But – we must ask – how do we reach that fulfillment?
How can sinners enter into eternal joy without repentance, grace, perseverance, and the Cross?
The traditional prayers hold the means and the end together. They remind us that the way to the heavenly throne passes beneath the standard of the Crucified King.
St. Paul tells us that Christ is “the head of the body, the church” (Col 1:18). This raises another point worth emphasizing in our present ecclesiastical circumstances.
Sometimes people casually refer to the Pope as the head of the Church. Properly speaking, Christ is the Head of the Church. The Pope is His Vicar on earth, the visible principle of unity in the Church’s earthly pilgrimage. Vicarius indicates one who acts in another’s place, as deputy or representative.
The Petrine office belongs to the constitution of the Church established by Christ. Its authority serves the unity and preservation of the Faith. The Pope himself remains subject to the divine law and to the Lord whose Vicar he is.
Christ remains the Head. Christ is the King.
This truth offers considerable consolation when ecclesiastical news becomes bewildering. The Church’s indefectibility rests upon Christ’s promises. Her members, including her shepherds, remain susceptible to weakness, error, and sin. Our confidence must remain fixed upon Him who holds all things together.
Meanwhile, the Enemy labors relentlessly to dislodge Christ from the throne of the human heart. Our Lord calls him the “prince of this world” (John 14:30). He works through temptation, confusion, discouragement, pride, and the seductive promise that we can construct a better world by emancipating ourselves from God.
Spiritual warfare is real. The struggle involves individual souls and entire societies. Our weapons include prayer, sacrifice, sound doctrine, the sacraments, works of charity, and fidelity to our duties of state.
