'She gave me a glimpse into the Kingdom of God, a gift that has lasted all these years.' Sunday Reflections, Christ the King, Year B

 

From The Gospel of John (2003) 

Directed by Philip Saville. [John 18:33-37, today's Gospel]

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, [England & Wales], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel John 18:33-37 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)

Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

 

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

 

Christ Before Pilate

Tintoretto [Web Gallery of Art]

The Kingdom of God breaks into our lives very often in quiet, apparently insignificant ways. More than 50 years ago, shortly after I was ordained, I was stopped by an elderly woman in a poor part of Dublin, just around the corner from where I had gone to school. She wasn't well dressed but didn't ask me for anything. She simply wanted to tell me how lonely she was. She kept repeating that.

I never met that woman again but I have not forgotten her. I often pray for her soul and also pray that one day she will welcome me into the heavenly home that God wills for all of us. That encounter at a street corner in Dublin has been an on-going grace for me, an experience of the Kingdom of God breaking through in what would seem to have been a totally insignificant event.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, Jesus tells us at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3). Being poor in spirit means knowing one's need of God. The woman who stopped me in the street was expressing that because she saw that I was a priest and in some way a representative of the Lord.

The only thing I could give that poor woman, who was old enough to be my grandmother, was a listening ear. But she gave me a glimpse into the Kingdom of God, a gift that has lasted all these years.

My kingdom is not from this world, Jesus tells us in today's gospel as he stands before Pilate. But his kingdom is constantly breaking through in this world, in very ordinary, unplanned encounters when God gives us the grace to see and to hear - and we accept that grace. And our accepting of that grace is in itself a grace, a gift, from God.

Head of a Woman

Vincent van Gogh [Web Gallery of Art]

The story of the old woman I met on a street corner in Dublin reminded me of a poem by Irish writer Padraic Colum (1881 - 1972), An Old Woman of the Roads. The words appear on the video blow to the background of Carolan's Farewell played on the harp. When Colum wrote this poem there were many homeless men and women in rural Ireland who would find a welcome for the night from families along their way. Today the homeless are in the cities and larger towns.

And I am praying to God on high,

And I am praying Him night and day,

For a little house - a house of my own

Out of the wind's and the rain's way.

Hail Redeemer, King Divine

Words by Patrick Brennan CSsR, music by  Charles Rigby

The Last Judgment

Florentine Master, c.1300 [Wikipedia]

PopePius XI established the Feast of Christ the King in 1925, to be celebrated on the last Sunday of October. When the new Church calendar came into effect in 1969 it moved the feast, now a Solemnity, to the last Sunday in Ordinary Time. Those who celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass observe the feast on its original Sunday.