Mass for the Annual Eucharistic Procession for Christ the King with the Marian Groups

Celebrated by Archbishop Denis Hart
at St Patrick’s Cathedral
on Saturday, 23rd November, 2002, at 8.00pm

Introduction

My dear Brothers and Sisters,

During our prayers and procession we have spent time and infinite conversation with an adoration of the Good Shepherd, Christ our King, present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the altar.

Above all our prayer has been that Jesus will draw us to his own will to redeem the world and make us instruments of redemption. By a holy life we seek to be one with him so that we can witness to him in the world in which we live.

To prepare our hearts for this celebration, let us call to mind our sins.

Homily

My dear friends,

I am delighted to be here this evening and to take part in this great event celebrating Jesus Christ, the Universal King. I do thank the Combined Societies of Mary most warmly for their organisation and sponsorship of our celebration.

There are many ways in which we could acknowledge Christ’s reign of peace and love, but it is particularly appropriate that we do so with a Eucharistic Procession. The processions of Kings are always grand events, but Christ does not rely on the trappings of grandeur in the way earthly monarchs do. Christ’s first procession, after all, was in the womb of the Blessed Virgin as she visited her cousin Elizabeth; his next was the long journey to Bethlehem just days before his birth. Later, we see him entering Jerusalem in a procession that is both triumphant and humble; and later still, in the most terrible of all processions, we see him carrying his own Cross to Calvary.

In all of these journeys Christ the King challenges our views of power and authority. Christ humbles himself by taking on human flesh; and humbles himself yet further in accepting death so as to save his friends. Our adoration, Procession, and Mass tonight recall that this King came to serve, and that in imitating him we will reign with him forever.

Nevertheless, as our reading from Saint Paul reminds us, though gentle and full of compassion, Christ is also a King who reigns in glory. At the end of time this great King will come to destroy every other sovereignty, every authority, every power. Finally, he will conquer even death, and then, having redeemed the whole of creation, he will hand it over to his Father.

He is, indeed, the strangest of Kings: a King who empties himself out for us, and a King who reigns over us. Jesus Christ, our King, is alive and reigning today, but his Kingship is ‘not of this world’. He governs not by conquering but by converting us; not by ruling but by serving us; not by amassing wealth but by giving it away.

God’s kingdom turns all of our familiar values and expectations on their heads, and Christ’s kingship too challenges all of our views about power and self-importance. We are called to follow a Shepherd who is gently leading us — not a despot who is commanding us.

People sometimes think of shepherds as accepting all of the herd, never rejecting any. But there is more to Christ the Good Shepherd than this. As the Gospel tells us, he is also our Judge. He will return, ‘sitting on a throne of glory’, to separate the sheep from the goats.

Our Gentle Shepherd is a Judge who loves us enough to allow us a free choice either to follow him, or to reject him. If we choose to reject him — if, like Satan, we say ‘I will not serve’ — then he will respect that choice and we will dwell forever with the goats, with the lost. If we choose to follow him, however, we will live in the ‘kingdom prepared for us since the foundation of the world’.

This evening our adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament calls to mind that Jesus wants us to deny Satan and to stand with the sheep — with the poor, the dispossessed, the powerless, the disabled, the nobodies. This King calls us from the Cross and from the Tabernacle: ‘Will you be mine? Will you give all you have for these the least of my brethren?’

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.