The King

I'm sorry it has been so long since I last posted. The truth is, we have not had internet for the past ten days. We live outside the city so we can't get cable out here, and my husband is a bit of a gamer and can't use satellite internet to run his games properly, so we decided to use the Verizon wireless internet service. It works pretty well but, unfortunately, it has a strong limit on how much bandwidth we are allowed to use. The prices for going over are very steep. Somehow we managed to nearly meet our limit with ten days left in the billing month. I tried to write a bit and post it during lunch at work, but posting at my work is fire-walled. I can read posts, but can't create or edit them.

So, here I am twelve days later, finally posting.

Today is the feast of Christ the King. It's really a beautiful feast. Every reading at Mass today declared the glory of Christ and proclaimed him our great and powerful leader--the King of all kings. I was captured by our first reading from the Book of Daniel that described the Son of Man coming on a cloud to the Ancient One where he was blessed and given power, authority, and rule over all. Isn't that a beautiful picture: Christ being taken before God His Father and crowned in His glory? It is an image that has stuck with me. It reminds me of popular movies and stories of medieval kings. In most of them you have a young man who may or may not be a nobleman, but he fights for his people and defeats the evil ruler or oppressive tyrant to save lives. He risks his live to save the lives of those who rely on him to protect them. Then, after proving himself a true hero and leader, he kneels before the bishop and is crowned king. (In modern stories we have a similar archetype; for example: The Matrix--the One, Neo, follows this pattern. Wasn't Christ called the One in the reading from David? How much older is the Bible than the story of the Matrix? Hmmm... I wonder how many story-telling archetypes we find in the Bible? The greatest story ever told... and it's all true...)

This is Christ who stands before our Father and is granted the kingdom. He is the great hero, the powerful leader, who fights the Evil One and grants us our freedom. The feeling of joy and pride we have for our handsome movie heroes (whether is be Arthur, Aragon, Peter, or the like) is nothing compared to the passion and love we should feel for Christ as our King. The great kings of long told legends are mere shadows of our Christ. If we can fall in love with them, how much more should we fall in love with Christ the King.