Christ the King: The Scandal of a Crucified Ruler

Here's the most subversive thing the Church does all year: On the last Sunday of the liturgical calendar, right before we reset the clock and start over with Advent, we proclaim that a tortured, executed criminal is the King of the Universe.

Not a warrior king who conquered nations. Not a philosopher king who impressed everyone with his wisdom. Not a prosperity gospel king who promises wealth and success to his followers. A crucified king. A king whose throne was a cross and whose crown was made of thorns.

If that doesn't strike you as deeply, radically weird, you've been domesticated by two thousand years of Christian culture. Because to first-century ears—both Roman and Jewish—a "crucified king" was an oxymoron. It was foolishness. It was scandal.

And that's exactly the point.

A Feast Born in Crisis

The Feast of Christ the King wasn't always on the calendar. Pope Pius XI instituted it in 1925, in his encyclical Quas Primas. And the timing wasn't accidental.

The 1920s were a mess. World War I had just shattered the illusion of inevitable progress. Nationalism was on the rise. Fascism was consolidating power in Italy. Communism was spreading from Russia. Secularism was pushing religion to the margins of public life. Everyone was looking for a king—a strong leader who could restore order and meaning.

Pius XI looked at all these competing claims to absolute authority—the nation, the state, the party, the market—and said: No. There's only one king, and it's not any of these pretenders.

This is where Catholicism gets uncomfortably radical. We're not just saying Jesus is Lord of our personal spiritual lives, our private devotions, our Sunday mornings. We're saying he's King of the Universe. That means his authority extends over economics, politics, culture, nations, empires, corporations, parties, and every other structure that claims our allegiance.

Every. Single. One.

The Interrogation That Defines Everything

The Gospel reading for Christ the King in Year B is the interrogation of Jesus by Pontius Pilate from John 18. And it's one of the strangest conversations in all of Scripture.

Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?"

Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"

Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?"

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."

Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?"

Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."

— John 18:33-37

Notice what Jesus does here. He doesn't deny being a king. But he completely redefines what kingship means.

Pilate is thinking in terms of political power, military force, territorial control. That's what kings do. They fight. They conquer. They impose their will through violence.

Jesus says: My kingdom is not from this world.

This doesn't mean his kingdom is purely spiritual, floating somewhere in the clouds, irrelevant to earthly life. It means his kingdom operates by a completely different logic. His power isn't the power of the sword. His authority doesn't come from armies or wealth or political maneuvering.

His power is truth. His authority is love. His victory is self-sacrifice.

Why We End the Year Here

The placement of this feast matters. It's not random. It's the culmination of the entire liturgical year.

We've walked through the whole story: Advent's waiting, Christmas's incarnation, Lent's repentance, Easter's triumph, Pentecost's fire, and all those Sundays of Ordinary Time where we learn what it means to follow Jesus in daily life. And it all builds to this: Christ is King.

The end of the Church year is saturated with eschatological themes—fancy theological language for "last things." The readings in November talk about the end of the age, the final judgment, the coming of the Son of Man in glory. It's meant to remind us that history is going somewhere. It's not just a meaningless cycle of events. There's a destination.

And the destination is Christ's kingdom fully realized.

"As the end of the liturgical year approaches, the readings at Mass speak of the end of all things in Christ... The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King celebrates Christ as the Lord of all history, toward whom all things are moving."
— USCCB, Introduction to the Liturgical Year

This is deeply counter-cultural. We live in a society that has largely abandoned any sense of cosmic purpose. History is just one thing after another. Time is money. The future is whatever we make it—or whatever we're anxious about.

The Church says: No. Time has meaning. History has a direction. And that direction is a person—Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

The Uncomfortable Implications

If Christ is really King—not just metaphorically, not just spiritually, but really—then some uncomfortable implications follow.

First: No earthly power is absolute. Not your nation. Not your political party. Not the market. Not your employer. Not the algorithm. Every power that claims total allegiance is a usurper, a pretender to Christ's throne. Christians throughout history have died rather than say "Caesar is Lord" because they knew there was only one Lord.

Second: Power must be exercised as service. Jesus explicitly taught this: "Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant" (Mark 10:43). If the King himself washed feet and died for his subjects, then every exercise of authority—political, economic, ecclesial, familial—must be ordered toward the good of those served, not the aggrandizement of those serving.

Third: The last will be first. Christ's kingdom inverts all our hierarchies. The poor are blessed. The meek inherit the earth. The hungry are filled. This isn't just pious sentiment. It's a political claim about how God sees the world and what justice actually looks like.

Next Week, We Start Over

After Christ the King, the calendar resets. Next Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent. We start the whole cycle again—waiting, preparing, hoping for the coming of the King.

But it's not just repetition. It's a spiral. Each year we go deeper into the mystery. Each year we understand a little more what it means that Christ is King and we are not. Each year we're invited to let his kingdom come a little more fully in our own lives.

Because Christ's kingship isn't just something we celebrate once a year. It's supposed to reshape everything—how we spend our money, how we treat our neighbors, how we vote, how we work, how we rest, how we love.

The liturgical year teaches us by repetition and rhythm. We don't just learn about Christ's kingship once; we live into it year after year, Sunday after Sunday, until it becomes as natural as breathing.

Or at least, that's the idea. Most of us are still working on it.

The Weird, Scandalous Hope

Here's the weird, scandalous, beautiful hope at the heart of this feast: The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in history, bringing all things toward their fulfillment in him.

The kingdoms of this world—with all their violence, their injustice, their lies—are passing away. They don't have the final word. The crucified and risen one has the final word. And his word is love.

This doesn't mean we sit back and wait for God to fix everything. The prayer Jesus taught us says "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." We're supposed to be agents of that kingdom now—feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting the prisoner, clothing the naked, working for justice, speaking truth, practicing mercy.

But it does mean we don't despair when the headlines are terrible. We don't put our ultimate hope in elections or revolutions or market forces. We know how the story ends.

It ends with a King on a throne. But the throne is a cross, and the king is the one who loved us to death.

That's either the most foolish thing in the world or the most subversive. Catholic Christianity bets everything on the latter.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."
— Hebrews 13:8

The liturgical year ends. Time keeps moving. Empires rise and fall. But Christ remains King. And one day, every knee will bow and every tongue confess what we proclaim today: Jesus Christ is Lord.

Until then, we keep practicing. We keep celebrating. We keep living as citizens of a kingdom not of this world, while working to make this world look a little more like that kingdom.

Happy end of the Church year. See you in Advent.