As the Church approaches the liturgical equivalent of a new year, the Mass rubrics stipulate that priests celebrate on the last Sunday in Ordinary Time the Solemnity of Christ the King. This commemoration fittingly recalls the centrality of Christ in the liturgy, and thus in the lives of men. Christ is both Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. All praise flows from him and likewise returns to him as its apogee. If celebrations at the close of the secular year bring with them resolutions for the year ahead, then at the end of the liturgical year Catholics do well to make provisions for renewed virtue and cooperation with grace. One begins any sort of resolution only by recalling that Christ is the source and summit of the Christian life. That requires pruning away all that hinders him from taking center stage. God does not have a claim to some aspects of a personality or some moments of one’s time – as if he were one competing good among others. He claims it all. In a word, he is sovereign. Indeed, when Pope Pius XI established the Solemnity of Christ the King in the universal calendar, he insisted that Christ must reign as sovereign over the hearts of men. Too often, rational creatures submit to sovereigns of lesser provenance — power, prestige, fame, money, strength, popularity, beauty — finding dissatisfaction as a liege in their courts. Only Christ satisfies. As the liturgical year reaches its apex, soldiers marked for Christ will recommit themselves as royalists, fighting to keep out everything that would unseat the Author of grace.
