The year is 1925. World War I is over, and the United States is enjoying an unprecedented economic boom, but Europe is still devastated from the war (a war that will continue to be called in Europe, “The Great War” – the war that put the nail in the coffin of the old Europe of kings, aristocrats, and the preferential treatment given to the Catholic Church). In Italy, Benito Mussolini has seized power as dictator, and Adolf Hitler has just been released from prison and has published his autobiography. As the world reels from the effects of World War I, the Second World War is already brewing. It is in this context that the great Pope Pius XI established today’s feast, the Feast of Christ the King, which we celebrate for the hundredth time today in 2025.
Pope Pius wrote: “The rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences … : the seeds of discord sown far and wide; bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, insatiable greed, a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin” (Quas Primas 24).
In response to the evils Pius XI saw all around – and that plague our own day as well – the Pope’s solution was that the Church throughout the world with one voice ought to declare the Kingship of Christ.
As we have said before, the question of former ages was “Who is God?” The great question of Pope Pius’s day was: “What does this new modern world have to do with God and with the Church?” But the question of our own day is even more basic: “Who is the human person?”
The Church of the first centuries had an exciting and compelling answer to the question of its day. Instead of the pagan deities who drunkenly treated humanity as their plaything, the God of Christianity took on human flesh, entering our fallen world and redeeming it. So likewise, the Gospel proposes a unique and exciting answer to the question posed by the contemporary world, “Who is man?” While the world tells us that the human person is meant only for the exhausting pursuit of fleeting pleasure for 80 years or so, and dust thereafter, Christ shows us that belief in Him explodes our horizons, giving life a purpose and meaning far beyond what the material world can offer.
To propose the Kingdom of Christ, then, is to propose a kingdom of authentic humanity, a kingdom in which all the ends of the human person can be fulfilled: material and spiritual. It means that the secular power’s God-given mission to uphold the common good includes the possibility of men and women fulfilling their spiritual ends. And it means that the rights and dignity of every human person are respected, cultivated, and preserved.
For Her entire history, the Church has fought for this recognition of the value and dignity of every human life. In recent decades, this has meant, in particular, standing up for the dignity of the unborn, whose very humanity is called into question. It has meant standing up for the rights of workers exploited by corporate greed. It has meant the establishment of hospitals, and being the first in our country to treat every sick person regardless of their ability to pay.
Without at all lessening our concern for any of these faces of humanity, the Catholic bishops of our country, in an overwhelming consensus and with the explicit support of the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ, have called on us to recognize the humanity of the many people who have sought and found a home in our country, making valuable contributions to their new home, fleeing violence and insecurity, and now threatened by “indiscriminate mass deportation.”
“The priority of the Lord,” the bishops of our country remind us, “is for those who are most vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger (Zechariah 7:10). In the Lord Jesus, we see the One who became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9), we see the Good Samaritan who lifts us from the dust (Luke 10:30–37), and we see the One who is found in the least of these (Matthew 25). The Church’s concern for neighbor and our concern here for immigrants is a response to the Lord’s command to love as He has loved us (John 13:34).”
Every one of us ought to ask ourselves two questions: First, when we engage on this difficult issue of immigration, what is my default view of immigrants? Is it a humane one? And second, what is the lens through which I see this situation? What is most deeply informing my approach?
When the subject of immigration comes up, we often have very different images in our mind of what an immigrant looks like. When you say, “immigrant,” or “illegal immigrant,” I think of Eduardo sitting right there in the third pew with his family every Sunday. He’s the general manager of a factory. His teenage son and nephews were the ushers who opened the door when you walked in. When that son was 15, he broke their priest’s glasses playing volleyball in the back yard as the sun went down but everyone was having too much fun to stop. He’s the soccer coach whose team everyone wants their son on.
It’s Maria, who saved the marriage of a young couple by refusing to give up on them, it’s Christian, who visits every homebound parishioner, every week. It’s the young man who desperately wants to be a priest, but gets turned away because he doesn’t have papers. These are the people afraid to go work, afraid to bring their children to school, afraid to come to Mass after churches are declared fair ground for immigration enforcement. These are the people who suffer when immigrants are vilified by rhetoric that calls into question their humanity.
Immigration is important not just because of the need to affirm the humanity of all persons, but because it points out where our loyalties really lie – to which Kingdom we really belong. Who is really forming our hearts? Why do people who are otherwise so doggedly faithful to the most difficult demands of the Gospel, become so uncomfortable when their Shepherds teach on this issue? Why do we so stubbornly resist the guidance of the Successors of the Apostles as they attempt to form on hearts on an issue of such great importance? Who has a greater hold on my heart: my shepherd, or my favorite news anchor or podcaster?
Yes, it’s true that the Church’s infallibility does not extend to the political discernment of how many immigrants our country can successfully integrate and support. But those who claim that the Holy Father and the US Bishops support a vision of a borderless New Order are also greatly exaggerating. As Pope Leo answered recently: “No one has said that the United States should have open borders. I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter.”
But we’re not talking about political policy proposals. We’re talking about how we react to people. We’re talking about whether we see their humanity. Who is forming our conception of the human person? Do we belong to the Kingdom of Christ? The real, visible kingdom of Christ, not an invisible, gnostic Church in which the real Catholicism is something other than the lived, visible structure of the Church guided by the successors of the Apostles. To which kingdom does our loyalty really belong? We can’t be the parish that accepts and is faithful to all the hard teachings, except this one.
For 100 years, the Church has celebrated the Feast of Christ the King. She has proposed His Kingship and belonging to His Kingdom – the Church – as the answer to the great questions posed by our world: Who is God? What is the relationship between this world and His Kingdom? Who is the human person?
In the Gospel, we see that Christ’s Kingship is present on the Cross, that no one is outside the bounds of His love and concern, that His Kingship’s power is founded on His suffering and sacrifice, as He makes peace through the blood of His Cross. To be members of His Kingdom, to live under His Kingship, is to be prophets of authentic humanity, seeing His face in all the vulnerable and the suffering.
The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson
Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne
Solemnity of Christ the King, A.D. MMXXV
Father Gregerson 