By Celso Júlio da Silva, LC

«Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat!». Strong and beautiful words engraved on the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square, which Lorenzo Perosi adorned with musical brilliance. They resonate within our hearts once again, but with a paradoxical touch. If today we are called to extend our hand to the poor, amidst so many problems and shortages we are experiencing, let us not lose sight that Christ the King is the First Poor who extends His hand to us from the cross.

In this 2020, Christ the King enters the brink of poverty and pain as a source of hope. It is celebrated within a world suffering from Covid-19, from instability and uncertainty about the future. The feast of Christ the King, if not celebrated from the salvific experience of Christ the poor and suffering who redeems us with His love, could become something anachronistic and unreal. Ultimately, we would forget that «the Christian is in the world what the soul is in the body» (Letter to Diognetus, Part 1: 2-10: Christianity, paganism, and Judaism). The reality is that the world suffers, and only with Christ can it emerge from the shadows of death and uncertainty.

«Christ became poor to enrich us with His poverty» (2 Cor 8:9). The King of the Universe is paradoxically a poor man. Christ is the Poverello par excellence! This year, Christ’s kingship is clothed in poverty, lack, and suffering laden with hope. The crisis that the world faces in many sectors of human existence, if not viewed from the humble kingship of Christ, reduces to an absurd dark jungle from which we will not emerge by our own strength—if in any way we can evoke Dante’s dark forest in his Divine Comedy.

In Christ the King and the Poor, every Christian can extend their hand to the brother in need, who will always be among us: «The poor you will always have with you» (Mt 26:11; Jn 12:8). Extending the hand to the poor (cf. Sir 7:32) has been the message of Pope Francis on the occasion of the IV World Day of the Poor, one week before Christ the King. Therefore, only in Christ will the material support we give to those in need be a source of grace, rooted in the kingship of the Son of God who experienced the harshest poverty of human existence, touching in His own flesh the ignominious death on the cross.

Christ reigns in the hearts of all those who become solidaristic with their neighbor in these difficult times. If Christ also reigns today, then the beauty of His Kingdom is concretely «in the extended hand of the doctor who cares for each patient trying to find the right remedy. The extended hand of the nurse and the nurse who, far beyond their working hours, remain to care for the sick. The extended hand of those working in administration and providing the means to save as many lives as possible. The extended hand of the pharmacist, who is exposed to many requests in risky contact with people. The extended hand of the priest who blesses with a torn heart. The extended hand of the volunteer who helps those living on the street and those who, despite having a roof, lack food. The extended hand of men and women working to provide essential services and security» (Pope Francis, Message for the IV World Day of the Poor 2020, no.6). Where there is a hand extended to the poor, there reigns Christ, who on the cross strengthens and gives meaning to the reality of pain, suffering, and death!

Living the Solemnity of Christ the Crucified King in so many human realities of trial and pain can be the purpose that culminates this liturgical year. But never with the pessimism that poisons the soul, for «this is the precious elixir of the demon», as Bernanos writes in the Diary of a Rural Priest; but with the hope that Christ’s poverty culminates on the cross and there grants us salvation. In fact, the condescension of the Word of God with the human race had its limit «until death, even death on a cross; therefore, God has exalted Him» (Phil 2:8-9). Amid this dark jungle of insecurity and instability, Christ the King, triumphing from the cross over our evil and sin, descends into that dark place of waiting, insecurity, and despair in our lives, and in the lives of so many tested by pain. He descends as the Victorious Lord to show that His love is stronger than evil, than the virus, than death. He is the Poor King and at the same time the Hope of the poor who trust in Him!

Christ is Poor and embraces the cross, for He is our Hope and our King. But humanity repeatedly, throughout history, does not tire of choosing the role of contrasts that clash and destroy. Many hands were also extended toward Christ to slap Him (cf. Jn 18:22); to arrest and crucify Him (cf. Mt 27:26-50). Today, the scene is the same because man remains the same, although times and places change. Christ cannot reign where «hands are extended to quickly touch the keyboard of a computer and move sums of money from one part of the world to another, decreeing the wealth of narrow oligarchies and the misery of masses or the failure of entire nations. Hands are extended to accumulate money through the sale of weapons that other hands, even children’s, will use to sow death and poverty. Hands are extended to exchange doses of death in the shadows to enrich themselves and live in fleeting luxury and debauchery. Hands are extended to exchange illegal favors for easy and corrupt gains. And there are also extended hands that, in hypocritical puritanism, establish laws they do not observe» (Message for the IV World Day of the Poor 2020, no. 9).

Evil is not a trivial matter. Those extended hands to do evil reflect a hollow, poor, and selfish heart. Against this, the classical wisdom strongly resonates, which is verified again and again in humanity when it affirms that «the poor are not those who have little, but those who desire more» (Seneca, Epist 87 39). Selfish ambitions that distance the soul from Christ the King, leading to cold and hypocritical indifference in the Christian who thinks he loves God but turns his back on the suffering brother asking for help. «Whoever does not love the brother he sees cannot love God whom he does not see» (1 Jn 4:20).

Christ is the rich who became poor, dying on a cross for all. All material and spiritual poverty in this world finds its meaning only in the throne of Christ’s cross, poverty caused by evil and sin. Christ, in turn, did not come to give an answer to human suffering but came into the world to fill that suffering with His presence, as poet Paul Claudel succinctly affirmed. ¡Christ the King is the Poor who extends His hand to all the poor of the earth! Therefore, His outstretched arms across the earth symbolize His divine hand, nailed out of love for all men, extended to everyone. Christ is the first to extend His hand to the poor of the world before we stretch ours.

Considering this on this Solemnity is to flee from mere philanthropy that impoverishes our acts of generosity. Let us embrace Christ Crucified, and then our hand extended to the poor will have an eternal value, where our true riches lie. Contemplating the extended hands of the Universal King on the cross, immersed in the deepest poverty, we can pray with the heart of St. Bonaventure: «Return, oh soul: Jesus Christ calls you with His arms extended on the cross; return, the divine abyss of the Holy Trinity awaits you! Behold, oh soul, the voice of your Beloved inviting you!» (St. Bonaventure, Soliloquy of the Soul or Four Exercises of Meditation).

With our eyes fixed on Christ the King and our hands extended to our brother, Pope Francis invites us to consider two purposes for which each one lives with a heart of mercy. First, «remembering our common destiny can help us to live more attentively towards those who are poorer and have not had the same opportunities as us» (Message for the IV World Day of the Poor 2020, no.10). Second, «the purpose of all our actions cannot be other than love» (ibid., no.10). Christ on the cross reminds us that the one who reigns is the one who serves, the one who gives his life. The sublime example of Christ the King of the Universe, who, being rich, makes himself poor to redeem us, commits us to consider our lives in the light of eternity. Forgetting that «at the end of life we will be judged on love» (St. John of the Cross) can cause us to lose the profound sense of the Christian humanism that humanity so desperately needs in the current crisis.

In this 2020, Christ, the First Poor who precedes us and shows us the true wealth in heaven, invites us to embed that «Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat!» in our hearts, and with our hand extended to our brother, that our life becomes, not just a beautiful melody to Christ the King as Maestro Perosi made it, but something much more meaningful—that it becomes a new song for the Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

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Drawing by César Pérez Luzardo, LC