Readings: Ezekiel 34:11‑12,15‑17 1 Corinthians 15:20‑26,28 Matthew 25:31‑46
The Feast of Christ the King marks the end of the liturgical year with readings that speak of Christ's triumph over sin and death and the final judgment in which he as shepherd will separate the nations, like sheep and goats, on the basis of their kindness to his suffering brothers. With confident faith, let us pray for the completion of Christ's kingdom of peace and justice in the words of the responsorial psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want" (Ps 23).
Ezekiel's shepherd allegory speaks of the Lord God coming to rescue the strayed and lost sheep and to destroy "the sleek and the strong" who have abused them. The prophet was living with the Jewish exiles in Babylon, and in the first part of his allegory he denounces Judah's latest kings and leaders as "shepherds . . . who have been pasturing themselves" and fleecing the flock entrusted to them. Because of their selfish rule, the nation has gone into exile; its people have been "scattered for lack of a shepherd and become food for the wild beasts." But now, through Ezekiel, God announces, "I myself will look after and tend my sheep." God will restore the nation from exile; the lost and strayed sheep will be sought out and brought back; the injured and sick will be bandaged and healed. "The sleek and the strong," who have taken advantage of their weaker brethren, will be destroyed, as the Lord God judges "between one sheep and another, between rams and goats."
In the 1 Corinthians reading, Paul is responding to those who claim that Christians already live in a resurrected state and that there will be no resurrection of the body at the end time. Paul argues that Christ's bodily resurrection is the heart of the Christian good news, and, in this section, he insists that the resurrected Christ is like the first fruits of a harvest which will affect all humanity. Paul understands Christ as the new Adam: as "death came through a man (Adam)," so resurrected life has come through the new man, Christ. In the interim between Christ's resurrection and the final resurrection, "Christ must reign until God has put all enemies under his feet . . ." The greatest and "last enemy to be destroyed is death" which has already been defeated in the resurrection of Christ.
Jesus concludes his final discourse in Matthew with the scene of the Last Judgment (Mt 25:31-46) in which acts mercy will be the criteria by which all will be judged. When the nations are assembled before him as the glorious Son of Man seated upon his throne, they will be separated like sheep from goats and blessed or cursed by the mercy or neglect they have shown to the hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, and prisoners—the traditional corporal works of mercy in the Jewish and Christian traditions. The surprising feature of the judgment is that in showing mercy for or neglecting these needy they have been encountering Jesus himself who in his public ministry has identified himself with the poor and suffering and who has come “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (20:28). “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Jesus is truly Emmanuel, God with us, present in the neediest of all until he returns in glory.
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