Thirty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

2 Samuel 5:1-3 Colossians 1:12-20 Luke 23:35-43

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According to our liturgical calendar,
today is the last and 34th Sunday in Ordinary Time and the close of
another liturgical year. Beginning next Sunday, we will begin our procession
through Advent and into the Christ Mass. It is something beautiful to consider
that right before we turn our attention to the infancy narratives of Christ Jesus,
we pause to reflect on the inheritance of His Kingship and on our dependence on
Him as our King.

The
First Reading today for the Solemnity of Christ the King comes from Second Samuel 5:1-3, and is
filled with beautiful, covenantal, and prophetic language. Chapter five,
concerning the anointing of David to be King of all of Israel, opens up with
all the tribes of Israel coming to David in the city of Hebron and saying “Here
we are, your bone and your flesh.” This is creation, covenantal, and sacramental
language. It sounds like what Adam exclaimed when it first saw his bride, “This
one, at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be
called Woman.” The People of Israel identifying with their new king in this way
signals that they belong to him and him to them. Another example of covenantal language
is in the next verse when Tribes recount what God had done for them through
David and how he was chosen by God, not them, in the way same that a father
would repeat the Haggadah on the
night of the Passover to remind his family what God has done His people through
Abraham and Moses and that they could not save themselves – God needed to miraculous
step into creation for them to be saved. Here they say, “In days past, when
Saul was our king, it was you who led the Israelites out and brought them back.
And the LORD said to you, ‘You shall shepherd my people Israel and shall be
commander of Israel.'” Yet, David has a choice to participate in this
calling. He could reject this tribal and earthly kingship, just as Jesus would
in centuries to come, but he does not. He accepts the call of God upon his life
and on that day, before the Lord, he made a covenant with the Tribes to be their
King and they anointed him as such; David the King of Israel. In verse four the
text informs us that David was only thirty-years-old when he began his reign, which,
tradition informs us, was the same age when Jesus would begin His earthly
ministry.

David being anointed King of Israel
should not only call us into understanding how the promise of God to give
Israel a King forever is perfectly fulfilled Christ Jesus, the King of Heaven
and Earth, but should also remind of our own inheritance and anointing that we
received through the liturgy on the day we were anointed with the sacred chrism
oil of Baptism. On that day, our anointing by the Holy Spirit incorporated us
into Christ who was anointed priest, prophet, and king. Through Him, we
participate in this threefold office in the world and fulfill in another way
the promise of God to give His People their King forever through the seed of
David who came as the bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, but also as God.

The
Second Reading from Colossians
1:12-20 contains an early confessional and creedal hymn of the Church, beginning
in verse 15. This hymn should remind every Catholic of the truths we confess
in the Gloria in Excelsis Deo and in the Creeds about who Christ Jesus is and of
His role in creation and in salvation history.

Reminiscent of our confession about Christ in the Nicene-Constantinople Creed and in the opening of the Gospel of John, the first stanza of this hymn (vv. 15-17), declares that Christ’s dominion as King encompasses the entire cosmos because they were created by Him and for Him. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all