Fifty years ago in 1925, Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King. Much of the music that was composed for the Mass and Office seems to me to have been quite good, but good, bad, or indifferent, that is all gone. The feast remains, however, and in terms of much religious thinking of past decades, it seems even more fitting than was perhaps first recognized. For, if Christ has always been King and if the Gospels declare as much, the special celebration of His Kingship has been reserved to these latter times.

One likes to think that the scarcity of kings made this development easier. As long as there were many living kings in office in the world we know, it was not always in good taste to connect the Lord and Savior with their breed. There are Henrys and Richards and Charleses and Louises whose company is no great honor. Similarly, it would be somewhat awkward to call Christ our President and so associate Him with Johnson, Nixon, Harding, Coolidge and other worthies.

Yet we must be careful. The Lord was almost at pains to mingle not merely with the poor and lowly, but also with sinners, even sinful rulers. It would be an error to assume, I think, that kingship must be bleached of all stain before it can be applied to Christ the Lord. Even the saintly kings were quite human, not to say few. The best were blemished.

Because kingship is a secular business. So is being man. Being human. Being on earth. Christ's Kingdom is not merely a declaration that His Kingdom is far and away superior to any earthly facsimile, however reasonable. It is better to say and to see that kingship as such, being king, has by His state, become something not merely secular but also sacred. Kingship now has a dignity it never had before.

But so has being man. Being human. Being alive. Being here.

There is no such thing as secular any more. Or, if you like, no such thing as sacred. Or, to save theology, may we not say that sacred and secular are now wed?

When God became man, God did not disappear, nor did man. But something new is at hand: we have One who is at once both God and man.

This man is God. This God is man. This King is divine. This President is immortal. This reign is everlasting. This term of office eternal.

But everything is changed by that fact. Men are no longer merely men. Earth no longer merely earth. There is nothing only secular. Mere bread now becomes body. Mere wine blood. And divine Body. Divine Blood.

Just what is going to happen at the end of time we really do not know. We have, as I understand it, just a few hints. I do think it can be said that this world will perish. But it can also be said that it will perdure. It will be changed; that seems basic. Glorified. Transfigured. Renewed.

Or revealed. What will be revealed is the sacrality of the secular. The holiness of the profane. The glory of the common.

For bread and wine and human flesh, human life, and human loss, kings and crowns and royal robes, pain and suffering and death, are somehow, in some way, caught up in the divine. And it is for us also to be caught up in the divine, to enter into it, be transfigured by it, that human kind become God kind.

I thought of that the other week when we anointed the sick. We had Mass right after, you recall. And that's what came to me: This is my body. This is my blood. Each of us can say: this is my body. And when disease comes, death comes: this is my body you are breaking. This is my blood you are drinking. My life you are taking. Who is breaking? Who is drinking? The Lord of life and of death? Is God eating man? Or man consuming God? Whose life is this? Whose death? We are transformed into Him. So we enter His Kingdom.

Thus what we celebrate today has not happened yet. It is to come. But it happens every day. Comes every day. The ever deepening mingling of God and man, Heaven and earth, time and eternity.

It is not only, as the papers said, that Grant Park became a church when John Paul said Mass there for a million. Or Phoenix Park. Or Yankee Stadium. Or the Mall in Washington. The world became a church when Jesus appeared on it. And everyone on earth is in that church. And in that church glorious praise is sung to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He who reigns forever and ever. Good music. Blessed are you if you can hear that music. More than blessed if you can sing it.  Amen.

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