Christ the King Sunday

If you are an avid reader of this blog, you may recall a post here a few months ago describing the beginning of the Season of Pentecost. (See https://musicatpcd.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-season-of-pentecost.html) Well, here we are some 5+ months later at the conclusion of the season – in a liturgical day known as Christ the King Sunday. It only seems good and orderly to conclude the season in a similar way to which I began it here.

 

As the longest season of the liturgical year, Pentecost starts 50 days after Easter and ends the Sunday before Advent begins – a day also known as Christ the King Sunday. In some ways, CtK Sunday is the church’s New Year’s Eve because the new liturgical year begins next week on the First Sunday of Advent. The Episcopal Church’s online glossary describes CtK Sunday as “celebrating Christ’s messianic kingship and sovereign rule over all creation.” This denomination also offers a prayer on this day that God, “whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords,” will “Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule.”

 

But where did Christ the King Sunday come from? (After all, there’s no mention of this liturgical day in the Bible!) Believe it or not, Christians have only been celebrating Christ the King Sunday for just under a century. It was established as a Catholic feast day in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. David Ouzts explains:

In the aftermath of World War I, Pope Pius noted that, while hostilities had ceased, true peace had not been restored to the world and the different classes of society. His first encyclical (a papal letter sent to all bishops of the Roman Catholic Church) after the war was Ubi arcane Dei consillo (“On the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ”) in December 1922. He deplored class divisions and overt nationalism, and he maintained that true peace may only be found under the Kingship of Christ as the “Prince of Peace.”

 

In 1925, the pope formally introduced and established the Feast of Christ the King in his encyclical Quas primas (“In the First”): “When we pay honor to the princely dignity of Christ, men will doubtless be reminded that the Church, founded by Christ as a perfect society, has a natural and inalienable right to perfect freedom and immunity from the power of the state; and that in fulfilling the task committed to her by God of teaching, ruling, and guiding to eternal bliss those who belong to the kingdom of Christ, she cannot be subject to any external power.”

 

I think you will find the service music this week that exemplifies this notion of Jesus Christ as King over all. I’m grateful to Casey Tibbles for her artistry and collaboration. May the music enrich your Christ the King Sunday, and... Happy New Year!