Oblates of St. Francis de Sales

New DeSales World Newsletter - Summer Edition

Solemnity of Christ the King (November 21, 2004)

Suggested Emphasis

Our nobility consists in making the right choice(s).

Salesian Perspective

“Upon Calvary one cannot have life without love, nor love without the death of the Redeemer[King]...All Christian wisdom consists in choosing rightly” (Treatise, Bk.12. ch.13)

As he was hanging helpless from the cross, Jesus certainly seemed useless and irrelevant. He was so irrelevant that his life could be destroyed like the worst of thieves. The bad thief mocked and taunted Jesus like the others: "What kind of a Messiah and king are you? You big fake. You're hanging from the cross just like us. If you're really the Messiah, then save yourself and get us out of this. Is this the kind of power you have? You're just as helpless as we are."

Many people today are asking what kind of savior is Christ, what kind of king is the Whole Christ, head and members, i.e., his Church. Christ's kingdom seems to many to be irrelevant and as powerless, weak and ineffectual as Christ himself was on the cross --hanging helpless above humanity but not doing very much in a positive way to improve the lot of human beings.

It's comparatively easy to make the leap of faith when Christ performs some miracle or manifests his goodness in some marvelous and miraculous way. But think of the faith that the good thief had. He saw a human wreck before him - covered with blood, spittle and dust - a far cry from the image of the invisible God that Paul speaks of in today's second reading. He was on the point of death, hardly strong enough to draw a breath. Yet he begged to be associated with this apparently weak, helpless, irrelevant human outcast.

Francis de Sales envisioned Mount Calvary as the “Mount of Lovers.” Love and freedom go hand-in-hand. “Love,” Francis tells us, “has neither convicts nor slaves.” Beneath the apparent weakness and irrelevance of a bloodied and battered human wreck, the good thief saw and freely and lovingly chose the source of all love and forgiveness, He made a choice that ennobled him when he heard those joyous words ringing in his ears, “Today, you shall be with me in Paradise.”

Luke in today's gospel wants us to imagine ourselves as participants in the Passion drama. He wants us to identity with both the bad and the good thief so that we can see the elements in our own personalities that incline us to a phony, dishonest, evasive response of the bad thief and also the characteristic within us which inclines us to the open, trusting, enthusiastic response of the good thief. If our response is that of the good thief then, like him, our choice will ennoble us and make us sharers in God’s kingdom of love, peace and justice.

Alexander Pocetto, OSFS, is Regional Director for the De Sales Spirituality Center and Senior Vice President at De Sales University.