We
celebrated Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee earlier this year, sixty
years on the throne. I have never been much of a monarchist and tend to
think that we should let the monarch die a natural death with the
present incumbent being the last.
We are told that Christ's kingship is
not of this world and is eternal. Today's feast grew out of a period
when Catholic Christianity faced opposition and even persecutions from a
wide range of anti-clerical or revolutionary forces worldwide in the
19th and early 20th centuries. Amid all the political and social ferment
of that period there also grew an awareness of the needs of the poorest
and most vulnerable on the part of some of the more prophetic members
of the church. One such was Frederic Ozanam, one of the founders of the
St Vincent de Paul Society
It was with the local SVP that I cut my
teeth pastorally as a teenager in my home parish in Fife. The inner life
of the parish consisted in being an altar server, then there were the
more social activities such as the scouts.
However, the outer life of the parish
was contact with the SVP, discrete visits especially among the poor and
the less practising. Great care was taken to respect people’s dignity,
the weekly SVP meeting laid great stress especially in the spiritual
reading and prayers on the 'collaborative' nature of working with the
poor and disadvantaged. It was not all one way traffic by any means.
Somehow, if somewhat mysteriously to the teenage mind, Christ was found
in such encounters: "My kingdom is not of this world."
There were three of us teenagers who
would visit two old first war veterans, in one of local old folks homes.
One could not see very well and the other was deaf. They were very much
in the mould of Corporal Jones from Dad's Army.
I knew a far darker side to the great
war. My grandfather was a medical orderly in the Dardanelles campaign.
He never spoke much about it.
My generation has been very fortunate.
Those of us getting on for sixty years of age missed out on the two
world wars and were very lucky to avoid a third in the Cuban Missile
Crisis. We grew up in the post war welfare state with developing
secondary and tertiary education that was free. Most of us were able to
make use of the opportunities then available.
It was in one sense, as my old parish
priest used to say, looking back, a golden age, full schools, full
churches, full employment. We had a new parish church open in 1958. I
have preached at both fortieth and fiftieth anniversary of its opening.
The second was the last public outing of both my mother and father
together.
Had we seen a growing of Christ's
Kingdom over these years? We have seen governments come and go and much
change in our societies, but very little movement to a just and equal
sharing of resources. The advance of abortion, the onset of euthanasia,
has brought controlled death to our world. In the face of all this,
there seem little sign of hope. I think particularly of the generation
almost just before mine, in particular those who supported a Christian
socialist vision like those of my father's generation. Was this always a
lost cause?
We come back to today's gospel, Jesus
before Pilate as a king, one who stands for the truth. He tells things
as they are, that is why he is rejected. Only on the third day will he
be vindicated. That day of the resurrection is the fulcrum of all our
hopes. As St Paul reminds us in the fifteenth chapter of the first
letter to the Corinthians: "If Christ is not risen our faith is in
vain." Here is our hope against all those experiences of death,
worldwide and ages long. Trying to live that faith by the grace of God
is surely the building of the kingdom here and now, illuminated by the
death and resurrection of Jesus. It is, after all, at the very heart of
the prayer; he himself taught us to pray to the Father: "Your Kingdom
come."
(Aelred Connelly O.P.torch.op.org:here).
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