Homily 517 | Christ the King | Year B
Rather than focus on the readings that are proper to this Mass of Christ the King, in today’s homily I focus instead on just one short prayer that is also proper to this day. It is sometimes thought of as the “opening prayer,” but is properly known as the “collect.”
Almighty ever-living God,
whose will is to restore all things
in your beloved Son, the King of the universe,
grant, we pray,
that the whole creation, set free from slavery,
may render your majesty service
and ceaselessly proclaim your praise.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
I consider this prayer in three parts. The first centers on the word here translated as “restore.” It translates a Latin word, instaurare, which in turn translates a Greek word from St. Paul, ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι (anakephalaiōsasthai). They both have a sense of “restore.” The Latin has a connotation of putting right something that got broken. The Greek, however, is a little more explicit in that the restoration is accomplished by (loosely translated) putting the most important thing or “head” in the right place again. A good king governs his kingdom by making sure everything is well-ordered. Today, we get a chance to make sure that Christ, our “head,” is in the right place in our lives, so that he might bring about the “restoration” that our broken world, and broken selves, desperately need.
The second part of the pray presents two references to service. First, it announces that, because of Christ’s victory, we have been set free from slavery, literally from “servitude.” In this case, the slavery is to sin. We have been set free. But, as St. Paul reminds us, for freedom we have been set free. In what might seem a contradiction, the prayer says that we have been set free from servitude so that we might serve. Notice that it’s not the serving that is bad. We’re just stuck serving the wrong things. We’ve become slaves to our passions. Jesus frees us from this servitude so that we can serve the one person who really deserves our total service, Christ the King.
Finally, the way that we are called to render service is indicated in the very last part. The primary service that God asks is that we “ceaselessly proclaim [his] praise.” The word for “right praise” is a Greek word that is probably familiar to all of us. The word is “orthodox.” We often think of this word more in an intellectual sense of believing what is true about God. However, the word is actually more of a liturgical word. If we worship God correctly, with right praise, then we will also believe correctly, and ultimately live correctly. So, the greatest service we can do God is to worship him as he asks to be worshiped. If we get this right, then every other part of life will fall into the right place and be properly restored to order as a good kingdom should be.