Christ the King

“ Holy God we praise thy name, Lord of all, we bow before thee, All on earth thy scepter claim, All in heaven above adore thee. Infinite thy vast domain, Everlasting is thy reign.”


     The cross of Christ, soaked with his precious Blood, is not only a reminder of the price he paid for us to enter heaven, it is the very key by which we unlock the treasure. Christ said, “I am the door, by me, if any man shall enter in, he will be saved.” These words are alive with the invitation of our King. We are to enter through Him and be saved. Christ invited us to "abide" in Him. By To abide in Him we must follow His commandments. Even more to abide in Him we must 'eat his flesh and drink his blood...so"As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me."(John 6:57)  By abiding in Christ and receiving our life from him, we enter, in a very real way, immediately into the life giving exchange of the trinity. Our very life is sustained and maintained by the very life of our King, who gives us his flesh for the life of the world. (John 6:51)


      So we are to have faith in the door, which is Christ, who is inseparable from His cross, and we are to enter, with trusting faith, into salvation. The reason the crucifixion is the glory of God at it’s fullest is because all the love of God, all his mercy and tenderness can be seen and experienced through the actions and words from Christ on the cross. The eternal love of Christ was poured forth from his wounds as He hangs dying on the cross. The cross of Christ stood in the world as a sign of the kingdom of heaven. A kingdom established by the very death of the Man who preached it’s coming for three long years. A kingdom that was secured by His suffering, and forged by His perseverance was manifest at the cross. We Catholics, bow to a beaten, bloody King on the cross. A King to who all others looks destroyed and dying, A King who looks helpless. Only we know, through his words, that this is the moment of glory, the moment where He is most powerful, the moment where all the majesty of God will be called into the dying Body of this king. He need not show us the kingdom, for we see it in His eyes. He need not show us the treasure for it is hanging before us, Bloody and torn. He need not prove His mercy, for likewise it hangs beside him. We see our King on his wooden, blood soaked throne, wearing His magnificent crown of thorns, bleeding for all his children, dying for all those who love him and hate him. This is the crowning achievement of all He has worked for, of all He has preached. For the kingdom of God is not of this world, so then why should our King be? Our King left this world to prepare our place in His kingdom, a promise made good by the blood of His cross. “Because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of the son into your hearts crying out: ‘Abba, Father’, therefore, now you are not a servant but a son, and if a son, a heir also through God.”

I’ve never seen glory and majesty more magnificent then that of our dying Lord hanging on the cross.
The cross is the key to the kingdom we are promised, Christ the king is the door. All we need to do is follow.