In order to enter into the celebration of today’s feast, two points are to be made clear. The first concerns the meaning of Kingship in this context.
In modern Western culture, Kings and Queens do not exercise much power. In the Bible, though, their power is absolute. What we are celebrating in today’s feast, then, is the power of Jesus – who never used His power to His own advantage.
Secondly, this power, real and effective though it is, is very different from power as the world understands it. We must not, therefore, presume that we know what we are celebrating. The feast is an occasion to re-discover the power of Jesus and how it works so we can celebrate it.
The re-discovering will be a true celebration as we experience that the way Jesus exercises power – the divine way – is good news for us as individuals and as communities including the entire human family. It will also be a call to conversion as we become aware of how little this kind of power is known and practiced, even by the followers of Jesus. We will also feel a longing for the coming of God’s kingdom – a new civilisation based on this kind of power.
The passage (Luke 23.35-43) invites us to celebrate the effect of Jesus’ power. The lowly are lifted up and sat in the company of princes (Ps 11.
The good thief on the cross is the perfect symbol of this process and we must enter with deep emotion into his moment of grace. Up to then he was nobody. Now, because Jesus shares his lowly fate, he has his moment in history, he enters into his truth. Jesus thanks the man for his faith – at this time Jesus needed that declaration of faith by the man. They then enter into paradise together, companions in faith.
We can read the passage from either perspective, that of Jesus or the thief. We celebrate times when our failures brought us into communion with those we looked down on. Other times, when someone we were in awe of shared their story with us and we discovered our own greatness perhaps for the first time.
Lord, give us the grace to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, so turning our moments of lowliness into moments of power, when we enter into communion with those in need, proving the values of this world are wrong. Also, for when we learn to accept that we cannot save ourselves, we then bring salvation to all those being crucified.
I will be looking at what I need for today
with love and prayers Fr Michael