In a few days, we will celebrate the end of the liturgical year with the feast of Christ the King and, a few days after that, the Thanksgiving holiday.
For me, these two celebrations are deeply connected. I am grateful for many things in my life: for my parents, my three sisters, good friends and Oblate confreres, my faith and my vocation, as well as for relatively good health.
But I am most grateful that Jesus is the kind of king that he is. When Pilot placed the words, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” on the cross over the head of Jesus, he was mocking him on many levels: this wretched specimen of a man, bloodied, wounded, naked, and crowned with thorns who hails from the backwaters of Nazareth –this man is your King?
Throughout his life and ministry, Jesus chose to be poor among the poor; to be an outcast among outcasts; and to serve people who were on the margins of society such as the leper, the widow, the young, and the little.
He preached the good news to all who would listen of course, but it was usually the sinner, the outcast, and the poor who listened, heard, were healed, and came to faith. The high and mighty, the powerful, and the wealthy often turned a deaf ear to what he preached and a hardened heart to what he promised.
His behavior was the parable. As the human face of God, he was revealing God who accompanies and companions the least and the last. He was also driving home this truth to all who would hear: we are –all of us—the least and the last. If, in humility, we can accept that truth, then we have a Savior in Jesus.
St. Paul will later describe this truth in terms of the fallenness of the entire human family in the sin of the first Adam and the promised hope of salvation for all of us in the new Adam. But Jesus preferred to convey this truth by the manner in which he lived, poor among the poor, and by the manner in which he died, the mocked and ridiculed King of the Jews!
As Thanksgiving nears, I am grateful for the many blessings in my life, chief among them my faith in Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews!
Rev. Lewis S. Fiorelli, OSFS
Provincial
Wilmington-Philadelphia Province
