In Solemnitate D.N.J.C. Regis, B

24 November, A.D. MMXXIV

            We could not pick two more contrasting images of Christ as King. We see the Son of Man, the divine Messiah, coming on the clouds, receiving “dominion, glory, and kingship.” And then we see the humble Christ being interrogated by Pilate, insisting “my kingdom does not belong to this world.”

            Which of these is the real Christ the King? Daniel and Revelation show us the glory of Christ the King to be revealed at the end of time in His second coming. Hidden in the humble human nature of Christ on trial before Pilate, is the one “robed in dreadful majesty,” who will be lamented by all the peoples of the earth who “sat at naught and sold Him, pierced and nailed Him to the tree.”

            The Book of Revelation, that strange and perplexing finale to the Bible, full of bizarre images like beasts whose head are covered in eyes, brought hope to the early Christians suffering under the persecutions of the Roman empire. It foretold the fall of pagan Rome and the coming triumph of the Lamb who was slain. Also prominent in Revelation, though, is the court of the King, the saints who have washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb.

            The greatness of a King can be seen in those he chooses as his ministers. When Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King in 1925, he placed it on the last Sunday of October, next to the Feast of All Saints. Chief among the ministers of Chris the King are the princes of the Kingdom: the Apostles whom He chose to lead His Church, and whose impassioned preaching and heroic sufferings inspired generations of Christians to come. Another group of saints also deeply inspired those first Christians. We could call them the princesses of the Kingdom: the virgin martyrs.

            The ancient Roman church had a particular love for these young women who claimed the two-fold triumph of virginity and martyrdom. We hear the names of the most revered virgin martyrs in the Roman Canon listed alongside the Apostles and the first Popes: Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia.

            Last Friday, we celebrated one of the most famous and beloved of these, St. Cecilia. Cecilia was devout from a very young age, vowing her virginity to the Lord. However, Cecilia’s wealthy and prominent family promised her in marriage to a well-connected young man named Valerian. We can imagine what might have been the state of Cecilia’s soul on her wedding night. Her good intentions seem to have come to naught. In her place, we might be perturbed or questioning God: Why would He let this happen to this young woman who wants to give her life totally to Him?

            Cecilia’s reaction to what could have been a time of great inner turmoil has earned her a dedicated following over many centuries. She is the patroness of church music because, in that time of trial, she sang and rejoiced in her heart. She knew that, being a subject of the greatest possible King, she had nothing to fear. She informed her new husband of her vow of virginity, and that she was protected by an angel. To see the angel protecting her, Valerian would have to go to Pope Urban to be baptized. Doing so, and beholding the angel protecting Cecilia, Valerian and his brother Tibertius became passionate followers of the same King and, in the face of great risk to their lives, dedicated themselves to burying the bodies of the martyrs until they were hauled before the city prefect to be condemned to death themselves.

            Cecilia was later arrested and condemned to be suffocated in the bath of her home. She was shut in for one night and one day, as fires were heaped up and stoked to a terrifying heat – but Cecilia did not even sweat. When the prefect heard this, he sent an executioner to cut off her head. The executioner struck her three times but was unable to decapitate her, so he left her bleeding and she lived for three days. Crowds came to her and collected her blood while she preached to them or prayed. On the third day she died and was buried by Pope Urban and his deacons. Almost 600 years later, her body was moved from the catacombs to the basilica built over the site of her home and place of martyrdom.

            In 1599, on the eve of the Jubilee year of 1600, her tomb was opened, and her body was found in a remarkable state of preservation – the first known incorrupt saint. The cardinal in charge of the church of St. Cecilia invited the young sculptor Stefano Moderno to see the body, and with the extraordinary image fixed in his mind, Moderno created one of the most beautiful works of baroque statuary. The image of Cecilia’s body, vividly lifelike and draped in the silk cloth with which her body was wrapped when it had been entombed in the church almost 800 years before, continues to en-trance visitors to her church to this day.

            What is perhaps most captivating about this representation of Cecilia, faithful to what Moderno saw when her tomb was opened, is the stillness and sense of peace that the body conveys. The Apostles are usually depicted in a manner designed to inspire us with the heroism they display before gruesome deaths. Even when statues depict them outside the scene of their martyrdom, they usually carry the tools of their execution: Peter with his cross, Paul with his sword, or Bartholomew (who was flailed alive) carrying his skin over his arm. But here, this princess of the King is serene and still, showing the incredible peace and confidence she has in the unfolding of God’s plans.

            Cecilia’s head is wrapped in a burial cloth, adding to the mystery of the scene, but on her neck can be seen the gash left by the executioner’s axe that failed to sever her head from her body. The incorrupt saints are signs pointing to the Resurrection, when the bodies of all will rise at the end of time, as we heard last Sunday. They show us that the body is meant for immortality.

            Cecilia’s death wound remains on the body that points to the glorified body of her King and to the one-day glorified bodies of all the members of His Kingdom. “Behold, he is coming amid the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him.” The peoples of the earth lament Him in the sense that either, 1) They lament that they failed to heed His call to conversion, to accept the invitation to belong to His kingdom, and thus they lament the severity of his justice, or 2) They lament that their sins, though forgiven by His mercy, were the cause of the glorious scars that His dazzling body still bears.

            Christ, both on the day of His Resurrection, and at His coming in glory as King, holds up the scars of the Passion so that all who pierced Him by their sins might behold the glorious tokens of the depths of His love. The martyred St. Cecilia and the victorious Christ bear the marks of their passions as trophies of victory. This is the great hope for all of us who strive to belong to His kingdom. Our bodies and souls are also marked by the scars not inflicted so much by the axe of a Roman executioner, but by even worse scars from the self-inflicted wounds of sin. Beholding the glorious Savior, we see how those wounds can be transformed into the marks of victory, every one a sign of His power to transform the darkest corners of our sinful hearts into the trophies of the triumph of His grace, beginning with the forgiveness received in Baptism and Confession, and continuing through the process of ongoing conversion.

            This is the sense in which His kingdom does not belong to this world. It is breaking into this world in the Church, but it is breaking into the world to pull us out of it. Gazing upon the pierced and victorious King we see the price of His victory, but also the hope of what that victory can do. “The dear tokens of His passion” on His now “dazzling body” can become the “Cause of endless exultation / To His ransomed worshipers.” For Luther and Calvin, salvation is an imputing of justice to otherwise unjust man – God irrationally deciding to call us just even though we aren’t. But the Catholic theology of salvation sees things very differently. Christ’s grace affects a true transformation of the soul of the believer – sometimes dramatically, more often slowly, step by step. Thus the wounds of sins on our hearts are not just covered over, but likewise transformed into the trophies of Christ’s triumph.

            At the coming of the victorious King, when “every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him,” the contents of every heart and conscience will be made known. Rather than the extreme embarrassment we might expect at that prospect, we will rejoice for the whole world to know how He has triumphed over sin in our lives, “has freed us from our sins by his blood … made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father.”

            To be a part of His kingdom, we must gaze upon the price of our redemption, recognizing that His now glorious scars are the hope that the battle wounds of sin in our hearts will likewise become trophies of His victory.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

Solemnity of Christ the King, A.D. MMXXIV