THE SAME STREETS…

Nwanyanwu Chris

On the last Sunday of the liturgical year, the church celebrates the solemnity of Christ the King, as if to crown all the celebrations of the entire year. The full title of today’s celebration is the “Solemnity of Christ the Universal King”. What that means is that Christ is the king of the entire universe, the cosmos, (John K.Aniagwu Breaking The Word p.306). The supreme Law in the kingdom of Christ is love, love of God above all things and love of one’s neighbor as oneself. In the words of Second Vatican Council, it is “a kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace”. This is the kingdom Christ came to teach humanity about, so that the people on earth will establish and maintain it here on earth and be able to join in the eternal Kingdom of Christ.

The universal church celebrates the kingship of Christ this week as she concludes her liturgical year. An important feature of this celebration is the Eucharistic procession that takes place after the mass. This procession is aimed at proclaiming to the whole world the Universal kingship of Christ and equally the eternal Kingdom of Christ which begins here on earth. Hence the procession in most cases covers a long distance as the people of in various groups sing and praise Christ the universal King and through it proclaim the eternal Kingdom of Christ.

Ordinarily, one will expect that with this celebration which was started over many years ago, the kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace would have been established here on earth at least to a large extent. Unfortunately, the reverse is the case. The evidence of this is the growing destructive humanism and the ever growing rate of secularism and immaterialism. This thus leads to corruption, injustice, hatred/discord, enmity, etc. All these are clear contraries of the make-up of the Kingdom of Christ which Christians particularly Catholics proclaim on the solemnity of Christ the King.

No one can claim not to know the exact reason why this Kingdom of love, justice and peace has not come to stay significantly in the world today. The simple reason is that we have not really proclaimed the Kingdom of Christ beyond our lips. In fact on those streets that we proclaim the Kingdom Of God, we also mock that kingdom. What a great and heavy iron!

One funniest thing about the issue is that we are not only mocking the Kingdom of Christ after proclaiming it, but that the proclamation and the mockery of the Kingdom of Christ is done on the same street and to the same people. That is, we proclaim to people about the Kingdom of Christ on the same environment and still come later to mock what we have earlier proclaimed.

We proclaim of the justice of the Kingdom of Christ and we come back to cheat one another in the market and other situations. We proclaim justice in the Kingdom of Christ and yet tribalism, favoritism, etc influence our actions in life.

We proclaim peace and love of the Kingdom of Christ; but we are living in very strong enmity with people around us. We fail to forgive wrongs done to us and as such hatred and discord has taken roots in our lives. That is why people assassinate the other who they consider as obstacle to their selfish joys. Envy, jealously, revenge, etc are features of the human society. These and many other acts that are contrary to the composition of the Kingdom of God are happening in ALL the aspects of the society.  We see them in the church, in Government, markets, business house, hospitals and all other places that human beings occupy.

Honestly we all are not unaware of all these of which we are all guilty of. If this is the case, why do we contradict our selves by proclaiming the Kingdom of Christ and yet mock it? Why do we find it very difficult to make our words correspond with our actions?  The interesting part of it is that this mockery of the kingdom of Christ is consciously and unconsciously done by the chief singers and announcers of it. Even when they behave that it is not the case through their appearances in public, the careful study of their private lives confirms the mockery.

And so with the situation before us, should we continue to proclaim the kingdom of Christ? Since we have failed to strengthen people’s faith in God, should we go about and make it known? Since we have only succeeded in mocking this kingdom of Christ, are we to preach about it to other people?

These questions and similar ones are very fundamental and necessary to us in our lives. They are so because we have not actually proclaimed the kingdom of Christ beyond our lips as our actions are in great enmity with our words. Where then does the problem lie?

The problem simply lies in our inability to make serious and genuine efforts to rise above our limitations and put ourselves in the vehicle that leads to the Kingdom of Christ. We are all frail naturally, but we still have the grace of God enough for us to manage our nature very well. Although this may not be an easy task, we all must be able to live out what we proclaim about the kingdom of Christ.

Of what essence is the proclamation about the kingdom of Christ when it has not existed first within our hearts? We all must know that proclaiming the Kingdom of Christ alone cannot take us to that kingdom. Instead it is the proper and complete application of the principles of the Kingdom of Christ that will make us worthy to be part of the Kingdom. And again, this Kingdom has to live in our hearts, practiced in our actions and then proclaimed boldly before here on earth before we can talk about the eternal Kingdom of Christ.

Anyone who cannot practice what he proclaims should not even proclaim at all; for proclamation is never complete without examples by the one that proclaims.