CHRIST THE KING

Let Us Then Love Our King

The last month's readings have been pointing out to us that our time on earth will end. Jesus warned that the Pharisees spoke with the authority from the chair of Moses, but they did not practice it with their lives. The foolish virgins did not bring extra oil with them. The servants were entrusted with the master's talents, but the man who received only one buried it "out of fear."

"I myself will look after and tend my sheep." Jesus took up the Cross and battled sin and death for me. He rose, the Victorious King. To Him, I was worth fighting for.

"I will rescue them from every place where they were scattered when it was cloudy and dark." He has never let me down. In times of great worry or sorrow, He has been there in the tabernacle, in the monstrance, on my tongue. 

"The lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back." When I began to stray, I could not go far. He always called me back through the scriptures, the Mass and my family. In my prayers and in how I live my faith, I will be his servant, trusting he will bring those I love and have strayed, back home to the Church. 

"The injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal …" When my heart seemed to be broken and anxiety tried to sicken my spirit, He has brought me healing in Reconciliation and the Eucharist.

All these things Jesus has done for me. And when I one day go to him and see him as he is, the King of the Universe, I think I will feel very poor and unworthy. He set the example for us during his time of his ministry on earth, and he asked us to do nothing more. He asks us to love each other and thus love him. Feed, clothe, visit, comfort those around us, especially in their times that are "cloudy and dark," and to do so with love in our ordinary, everyday lives 

Jesus calls us to love. St.Teresa of Calcutta said that we should not wash the plate because it is our duty or our job, nor out of obedience, but simply because we "love the person who will use it next."  

Most of Jesus' years on earth are not recorded in Scripture. They are hidden years, but imagine the lives he touched by his love, and that he sanctified ordinary everyday life.  

In "the twilight of our life," we will be judged not by possessions or successes but by "how much we have loved" (St. John of the Cross). 

Let us then love our King and His people as He loves us, to the very end. 

--Nora O'Brien

Send Us Forth are reflections written by St. Matthew parishioners and friends.