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Homilies | Saturday, November 21, 2020

To share in Jesus' Kingship, we seek to serve

Archbishop Wenski's homily at 2020 Thanks-for-Giving Mass, on feast of Christ the King

Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily Nov. 21, 2020, at St. Mary Cathedral, during the annual Thanks-for-Giving Mass sponsored by the Archdiocese of Miami's Development Office. The Mass honors the recipients of the One in Faith, One in Hope, and One in Charity awards, as well as inductees to the Archbishop Coleman Carroll Legacy Society, who have included the archdiocese in their wills or estate plans. This year, due to the pandemic, the Mass was livestreamed. It can be seen at this link: https://fb.watch/1XHoqC-8U4/

I thank you for being here this evening – both those of you who join me at the Cathedral and those of you who are joining from a distance through this livestream presentation of the Mass.

We are fast approaching the Thanksgiving holiday – and, given the pandemic, for most of us the holiday will be, like everything else this year, a “bit unusual.”

We, Catholics, do well to remember that Eucharist means thanksgiving. The Mass is the perfect Thanksgiving meal, for united with Christ in his sacrificial gift of Himself, we give God thanks for the gift of our salvation, the gift of faith, the gift of knowing that we are loved by a merciful and compassionate God.

Archbishop Thomas Wenski gives the homily during the annual Thanks-for-Giving Mass, celebrated at St. Mary Cathedral, Nov. 21, 2020.

Photographer: JONATHAN MARTINEZ | FC

Archbishop Thomas Wenski gives the homily during the annual Thanks-for-Giving Mass, celebrated at St. Mary Cathedral, Nov. 21, 2020.

And, if every Mass is a “Thanksgiving,” this Mass on the weekend before Thanksgiving is my opportunity to tell all of you “thanks-for-giving” to support our archdiocese through your generous gifts to the ABCD. Through the Archbishop’s Charities and Development Campaign, and in so many other ways, you seek to serve Jesus present among “the least, the last and the lost.”

These past months have not been easy ones. This year with the global health crisis, economic pain for so many and societal unrest have been challenging for all of us. In the face of these challenges we cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed by our fears. Fear – in our common usage of the word – refers to that unhealthy emotion of dread that often paralyzes us, that turns us inward and makes us defensive or suspicious of those around us. Too often we can be filled with that unhealthy, emotional fear, a negative fear that causes us not to act for the sake of the other but leads into a selfish gathering-in of things that we keep only for ourselves. Such a fear prevents us from loving others; it keeps others at a distance; and can isolate us into a self-imposed hell of loneliness. As Catholics we must respond to the challenges of our times with the courage of faith. We must be convinced that if the Lord takes us to it, he’ll see us through it.

Today, we celebrate the last Sunday of our liturgical year – and this week will be observed as the last week in Ordinary Time. Yet, this Sunday is in a sense far from ordinary, for today we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King.

At first glance, we might be tempted to regard such a feast as some sort of relic of a long past era. After all, today, in our postmodern age, we are not governed by kings. And kings and queens where they still exist are pretty much symbolic figureheads. And so, we might dismiss today’s liturgy’s acclaiming Christ our King as a bit anachronistic.

And yet the Solemnity of Christ the King – as a liturgical institution – is quite recent. It was established not by some medieval pope but by a quite modern day one, Pope Pius XI in 1925.

The pope was not engaging in some flight of fantasy; in fact, adding the feast of Christ the King was a rather thumb in the eye of a world which had already pretended that it could organize itself without God. The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia had already been consolidated and with it, under the spell of radical secular ideologies of both the right and the left, the 20th century was well on its way to becoming the most violent, the most murderous in history.

This was the climate in which this feast was born – and perhaps what motivated the pope to establish this feast was revolution in Mexico. There, a revolutionary government was established which persecuted the Church – and not just bishops and priests, but the entire community of the baptized – with a ferocity that paralleled what was already happening in Soviet Russia. There in Mexico, thousands were killed in the name of freeing people from religious “superstition.” This era in our southern neighbor’s history is well depicted in a Graham Greene novel, "The Power and the Glory," in which the main character was a flawed priest who could not escape execution. It was not just the stuff of novels – it was real. Led before firing squads, many died shouting: “Long live Christ the King,” “Viva Cristo Rey!” The Church remembers these Mexican martyrs – and we observe on Monday the feast day of Padre Miguel Pro and his companions. These martyrs and the millions who died in the successive holocausts of the 20th century remind us that when we pretend to organize the world without reference to God and his truth, we end up organizing the world against man himself.

And so when many thought that God should be exiled from the affairs of the world – or at least marginalized to the point where he didn’t really matter – Pope Pius XI in establishing this feast day wished to remind us that Jesus is the world’s true ruler and judge.

While the establishment of the feast is recent, the content of what we celebrate today is indeed quite old – indeed it is as old as Christianity. To say that “Christ reigns” is the equivalent of what we say in our profession of faith: “Jesus is Lord.”

If Jesus is King, he is a shepherd king – one who lays down his life for his sheep. In this sense, for Jesus, to rule is to serve – and in baptism he has made us sharers in his royal dignity and thus the greatest is the one who serves.

The Gospel today reminds us that this King shall return at the end of time to judge us. Judgment Day will be something like taking a final exam – but Jesus in today’s Gospel parable has told us what’s going to be on the test. And the parable makes clear: God will judge us on how we model ourselves on Jesus’ own way of acting, in other words, on how we serve the “least of his brethren.”

In the Gospel parable, those he called “blessed by my father” are those who served: that is, those who clothed the naked, fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, visited the prisoner, and welcomed the stranger. Jesus wants us to understand that where the poor and their needs are acknowledged, he himself is acknowledged. “Whatever you do for these the least of my brethren you do to me.” In saying this, Jesus implies that we won’t have to wait until the end of time to meet our judge: We have already met him – we have met him hidden in the often-distressful disguise of the poor.

During these days leading up to Thanksgiving, many of our parishes, even in the middle of a pandemic, have been involved in preparing and distributing “Thanksgiving baskets” to the poor and needy of our community. For example, Mary, Star of the Sea, Parish in Key West serves thousands in the Keys through its SOS ministries. Also, today’s second collection will go to support the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, through which the Catholic Church in the United States supports efforts that address the root causes of poverty in our nation.

To share in Jesus’ Kingship, we seek to serve – to serve Jesus present among those “least” of his brethren – the hungry, the naked, the stranger, the incarcerated – through the ABCD, the Archbishop’s Charities and Development campaign.

And if Thursday is Thanksgiving Day, today is our “Thanks-for-giving Day.” As Archbishop, I want to recognize you, and thank you – all of you – for your support of the Church here in South Florida. The ABCD helps supports the many ministries of the Catholic Church in the three counties of our archdiocese. These ministries represent concrete ways in which we perform what are called the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. Through your support of the ABCD, you help our Catholic Church here in South Florida reach out to the “lost,” to the “last” and to the “least.”

I thank you for sharing in this thanksgiving meal, the Holy Mass. This Mass is our Thanks-for-Giving Mass which I am happy to offer for you, your loved ones and your personal intentions. God bless.

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