I have always liked that our liturgical year now ends with the feast of Christ the King. It reminds us not only of the Last Day when Christ will reign in Judgment over all men who have ever lived, but also that beneath the showy pomp of human history, the Captains and the Kings who march through its pages are of infinitely of less account than, as the atheist historian HG Welles put it, the penniless preacher from Galilee who is the center of History. Just after the beginning of World War II the hero pope Pius XII wrote the encyclical Summi Pontificatus in which he reminded all of humanity that in the final analysis Christ, not Man, is King.
Mortal Kings and Kingdoms rise and fall. Christ remains.
An innocent Man Who draws all men into His Kingship.
I thought it was worth mentioning. Prior to Vatican 2, the Feast of Christ the King had a logical place in the flow of the liturgical year. The Feast of Christ the King was/is always the last Sunday of October in which we celebrates Christ’s Kingship over Heaven and earth. We then immediately celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints and the Feast of All Souls. The post Vatican 2 placement of the Feast of Christ the King takes away from the Feast’s solemnity as you would celebrate All Saints and All Souls before celebrating Christ’s Kingship over Heaven and earth.
Rant Warning!
I echo what paul coffey said. The “end of the Liturgical Year” placement of this Solemnity seems fine until the previous schedule, with its logical flow from the last Sunday of October into the celebrations of All Saints and All Souls, is considered. This change, as with so many of those that washed like a tsunami over the faithful beginning with The Council™️, seems to have been made almost solely for its own sake, i.e., “just because we can,” emphasizing the basic approach of Modernism to all preceding practices and traditions, which usually is to change them significantly, or as with the Tridentine Liturgy, to throw them under the bus. This gentle approach (sarc) is often accompanied by the claim that “we know better now,” or some other such nonsense. In the case at bar, it also displayed a rather disrespectful attitude toward the Pope who had established the feast only a few years before, to respond to the growing influence of totalitarian dictatorships in Europe, especially, by reminding the world Who is really in charge. Such apparent disregard for a predecessor Pope’s apostolic authority, explicitly invoked by Pius XI in his Encyclical Letter Quas Primas of December 11, 1925, which established the feast on the last Sunday of October, is another typical approach of the Modernists, as the past ten-plus years have demonstrated, painfully and often.
Nevertheless: Christus Vincit! Christus Regnat! Christus Imperat! The feast is officially today, unless you are fortunate enough to attend a TLM parish, so let’s celebrate it.
God bless all here.
According to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution the sovereign personhood of the citizen institutes our government. The Sovereign personhood infused into man’s eternal soul at creation institutes our government.