The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe – November 23, 2025
The proclamation today of Jesus’s crucifixion reminds us that this solemnity of Christ as King of the Universe is not the typical setting we think of for royalty. Here, we have no trumpet blasts, lavish garments, places of honor, or sublime choirs. We have instead a retinue of criminals flanking our King upon a cross, a plea not for revenge but for mercy, and a promise not of wealth but of hope. In these simple acts, Jesus revealed the divine glory of being fully human.
How do we temper, then, our desire to express the triumphant glory of God with the vision of God’s reign that our liturgical year gives us today?
This Thanksgiving, and in the days and weeks after it, give a bit of yourself to those who have blessed you this year.
We do so by making our liturgies as authentically human as possible. We look for patience with one another and not perfection. In our music, we highlight words that matter to discomfort the comfortable and comfort the inconsolable, instead of merely what is pleasant to the ear. We prepare places of honor in our churches, homes, and hearts not for donors, insiders, or those we know and like but for the forgotten, those who could never repay their debt, the one we call enemy, the indifferent, and the stranger.
This would be a fitting celebration for Christ through whose power and mercy all of us, happy thieves, may be granted to meet again in paradise.
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