The kingship of Christ is made known through the beauty of the saintly life
Posted on November 21st 2010 in Weekly messages
Two weeks ago Pope Benedict consecrated the cathedral of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. He spoke in his homily about the genius of Guadi, that allowed him to create this ‘visible sign of the invisible God’ and his three sources of inspiration, the book of nature, the book of Sacred Scripture and Book of the Liturgy. Later he made further points about the power of artistic endeavour, and especially architecture, to help form our human conscience. Guadi took the natural and made it reveal its profoundest depths. Out of the materiality of stone, concrete and coloured glass, combined with awesome human intelligence, he illuminated the depth of the human conscience, anchored in the material world but also open to God.
The encounter with beauty, the most difficult of concepts to explain, draws us out of ourselves and elicits a moral response. The explanations that one gives as to what moves one in a picture, building, novel or landscape, might sound incoherent to others, and be obscure to oneself, but a sentiment does emerge of stepping out of inner selfishness into something greater, the clarity of light. The result of this encounter might be described as the emerging responsibility one possesses for the whole, to God, to humanity and the world, not in the abstract but with regard to one’s own circumstances, the minute part for which one is responsible.
This Sunday the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Christ the King, and the kingdom emerges through the power of the Holy Spirit, like beauty, from within the created world. This may be seen in the terrible beauty of the Cross, when Jesus accepts His destiny and does not seek to save himself. The taunts from the leaders, the soldiers and one of thieves demand that He save Himself, as He had done so often for others throughout His public life. However, it was the ‘Good Thief’ who grasped that it was only through His death on the Cross that Jesus would enter into His kingdom, and thus effect His and others’ salvation. His hope was well placed, and Jesus promised that he would enter into paradise with Him today. This entry to paradise demonstrates that the death of Jesus on the Cross was the definitive conquest over sin and death itself. Jesus saved others by not saving Himself according to human demands. He gave His life as a ransom for many.
Two conclusions can be drawn from the Gospel this Sunday, first, the kingdom has definitively been established with St Paul drawing out its universal consequences; and, secondly, that the kingdom cannot be imposed by force. The conjunction of the two is hard to grasp, either one can veer towards a universal sense of salvation irrespective of personal moral conduct, or towards a narrower understanding of the orbit of God’s mercy to include the few. The difficulty in grasping both inferences simultaneously may be seen in the long debates over the translation of the Latin word ‘multos’ from the words of consecration at Mass into English. Is this the ‘all’ of the present translation or the ‘many’ or the revised translation. Neither by itself quite does justice to the combination of the universality of salvation through Christ’s death on the Cross and the requirement to associate with Jesus in hope, as demonstrated by the ‘Good Thief’.
The kingdom is visible to the eyes of the faithful, and in the way that beauty makes us step out of ourselves into something larger, so does the experience of the kingdom. The lives of the saints, and the example of countless other Christians, demonstrate the presence of the kingdom bursting through the everyday lives of humanity. Their actions are motivated by something more than self-concern. Through the action of the Holy Spirit, these Christians, parishioners in our own Churches and elsewhere, open a vista on to the human condition, that it requires Christ for salvation. They, as well as we ourselves, have taken the words of the ‘Good Thief’, ‘remember me’, made it, and continue to make it, their life story.