Celebrating Christ the King This Easter

We are now approaching the end of the penitential period of Lent, and preparing to enter the Triduum, which will end on Easter Sunday. It's the biggest celebration in the liturgical calendar, sometimes called the Solemnity of Solemnities. I hope that this Lent has been fruitful for the faithful who have attempted to embrace it, and that it has enabled both spiritual growth and a closeness with God.

We had an unusual pre-Easter week in which many in the alleged conservative media attempted to rewrite the phrase "Christ is King" to be an antisemitic slur. In the run-up to Easter, it's common for the secular world to engage in various attacks on Christians, but this year was slightly different. There has been an insinuation that those who do not engage in syncretism are problematic — thus impelling Christians to distance themselves from their faith in order to not be labeled harshly. Yet of all times of the year, it is at Easter when all the faithful ought to be able to see the need to bear their crosses for the sake of the Truth: Christ is King of Heaven and Earth.

As the Triduum begins, I do wish to caution people not to rush too quickly. Each day is distinctly commemorated, and we shouldn't wish to jump from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Modern man hides so from suffering as to wish to move directly from crucifixion to resurrection, and in doing so, denies both the gravity of his own sins and the love of God.

The glory of God is made manifest on Good Friday by His willingness to suffer voluntarily in reparation for the sins of Man, sins that were not His. He demonstrates His love through His decision to suffer an unspeakable death. That was the time of true glory. We rush past it in our hearts and imagination because it affects us if the claims are true, which we scarcely wish to acknowledge by fleeting thought. There's a weight to the acknowledgment that our own evils could have necessitated such a reparation—that justice, in the objective sense, demanded payment for what we have committed.

Nowadays, it's too common to try to glance over it all. In 1937, H. Richard Niebuhr criticized the so-called social gospel, which he summarized as, "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." Since then, the social gospel has probably become the top interdenominational heresy of today. We ought to hold such a viewpoint in contempt, at least because it's not true. It's a false gospel and a new religion.

We live in a society that is hinged upon a series of lies, and which the Truth ought to crumble. Among them is the assertion that our toleration of evil can result in a net good. Such has never been the case, and could never be so, as it contradicts reason and revelation. It is our duty to speak the Truth of Christ.

Soon, we shall land at what St. Athanasius called "the Great Sunday" in the Fourth Century. We shall point to His resurrection and acknowledge that Christ does not reign at some point in the future, but now, where He sits at the right hand of the Father, thanks to his victory over sin and death.

Let us go and worship Christ the King.