This Sunday is the Last Sunday of the Liturgical Year. The Liturgical Year consists of a three-year-cycle A, B, C, and we have now come to the end of Year B. Thus, we move from St. Mark, the Evangelist to St. Luke, the Evangelist next Sunday - the First Sunday of the Advent Year C.

In today’s Gospel scripture Jesus is questioned by Pilate about the charges brought against him - King of the Jews! Jesus is a king, but not the kind of king we might imagine. Jesus refers to a kingdom that does not belong to this world. As C. S. Lewis put it: “God doesn’t want something from us; he simply wants us.”

It’s not usual for us to think of kings and heads of state as caring people like Jesus - most of them are inaccessible, existing behind many layers of security and staff, but Jesus is more present to us than even we are to ourselves - as once for the disciples, so now for us, he opens the Scriptures and breaks the bread - the Son of God, King Jesus Christ becoming one with us and IN us through the Eucharist. Sometimes it’s only with the passage of time and our looking back over our lives that we can recognize how God has saved us and cares for us - FOOTPRINTS!

King Jesus Christ conquers - really? From the second reading, we know he conquered sin and death. Unlike earthly kings, King Jesus Christ does not force us or threaten us - sometimes I wish he did! He respects our freedom to decide and trusts us more than we even trust ourselves. Hell is not so much a place of punishment. It’s a place for those who say “NO” to King Jesus Christ and refuses to be guided by God’s love - therefore a state of punishment!
 

In Cycle A Gospel reading [Matthew 25:31-46] we can read about Jesus’ return in glory and the sorting of the sheep from the goats … to judge the living and the dead. Having loved like God and listened to the voice of King Jesus Christ, we will discover that somehow we recognize him and have met him before for he was the person we stopped and talked to begging at the street corner, the person we bought the hamburger for, the person we gave a spare pair of shoes to … “I assure you, as often as you did it for one of these least ones you did it for me.” Yes, we meet the King every day!