Will the world ever again recognize Christ as King?

(FSSPX) — On December 11, 1925, Pope Pius XI published his famous encyclical Quas Primas on the Kingship of Christ and asked bishops and priests “to explain in a manner suited to the understanding of the faithful what We are about to say concerning the Kingship of Christ.”

Christ has long been called king and sovereign. Christ’s kingship, however, must not be reduced to a mere guest title. His kingship is not a metaphorical attribute, a kindly gesture of recognition and appreciation that we give to one to whom we are grateful.

By virtue of His divinity, upon His entry into the created order, from the very womb of His blessed Mother, our Lord Jesus Christ acquires supreme and absolute dominion over all things created. He is God’s only begotten Son, consubstantial with the Father, possessing two natures in one Divine Person. “By Him all things were made, and without him was made nothing that was made.”1

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St. Cyril of Alexandra gives the theological reason for Christ’s sovereignty over mankind. “Christ,” he says, “has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped, but his by essence and by nature.” It is by virtue of the hypostatic union that He reigns over angels and men and that they, in turn, owe Him allegiance and obedience.

Christ’s kingship is not only a natural birthright. He reigns over us also by acquired right. By virtue of His most perfect humanity that He is first among men.

Whereas Adam, our first king, betrayed his allegiance to God and placed himself and all his race in a state of rebellion, Christ, the new Adam, leader and representative of the human race, “humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross.”2

By virtue of His divine perfection, Christ was able to restore man to the state of friendship and union with His heavenly Father that was forfeited by our first king. Christ thereby acquired the right to direct and lead us in all things appertaining our relationship with God. We belong no longer to ourselves, but to Christ who has wrought our redemption. Christ is our everlasting benefactor to whom we owe everything. Thus we bend our knee and profess fealty to Him.

King by nature and by acquired right, Christ exercises the threefold power of lordship. He is a lawgiver to whom obedience is due. “If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love.”3 He is judge: “For neither doth the Father judge any man; but hath given all judgment to the Son.”4 and He is the executor of His justice, for all must obey His commands and none may escape them nor the sanctions He has imposed when He returns to judge the living and the dead.

Although sovereign Lord and master of creation, Christ’s kingship differs from that of earthly kings. As He said to Pilate, His kingdom is not of this world. It is a spiritual kingdom that is entered by contrition, faith, and baptism. It is a kingdom that stands in opposition, not to earthly kingdoms but to Satan and the powers of darkness. It is a kingdom that demands of its subjects a spirit of detachment from riches and earthly things and a spirit of gentleness. They must hunger and thirst after justice, and more than this, they must deny themselves and carry the cross. Christ’s kingdom is one of divine grace and charity which transcends space and time and is without end.

Pope Pius XI dedicates the second half of his encyclical to the civil consequences of Christ’s kingship over the minds and hearts of men.

Contrary to modern thought, Christ’s kingship extends not only to those who belong to the Catholic Church through baptism but also to those souls who have strayed from the Church or have yet to enter. It is the whole of mankind that is subject to Christ, and the Church’s great mission is to announce this fact to the world.

All men, therefore, must bend their knee to their Creator and Redeemer. It is not only as private individuals that we must salute our King. Families and nations must also pay homage to Christ for they are also of His creation and are composed of the very beings that He has created and redeemed with His blood. Christ’s sovereignty, therefore, extends beyond the private realm of conscience to the public sphere.

Civil society owes fealty to Christ. His kingship embraces both the private and public lives of those who make up and govern civil society. Whether prince, president, or prime minister, civil authority is bound to recognize Christ as its High King from whom its authority derives. Civil authorities must aid God’s sweet reign over the minds and souls of His children.

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Christendom, for all its political upheavals, was the one time when men recognized Christ the King, both in their private and public lives. Kings and emperors at large recognized Christ as the foundation and source of their princely authority and saw it as their duty to lead their subjects in obedience to His commandments. In turn, their subjects looked upon their sovereign as Christ’s lieutenant whom they must revere and obey. Hence the marked reverence for authority, whether in the family home or civil society, which, in turn, gave stability and permanence to kingdoms and nation-states.

Christendom recognized the kingship of Christ over individuals and society, by inference, the Catholic Church, founded by Christ, saw itself as the guardian and promoter of His kingship, principally through the exercise of the powers of teaching and legislating in all things pertaining to man’s eternal salvation Having received from Christ Her mandate to lead and guide all men in the path of salvation, the Catholic Church claims the right not only to fulfil Her mission unimpeded by civil society but also to benefit from the help of civil authority.

A happy state of affairs is where both Church and state work in unison for the temporal and eternal welfare of their shared subjects, with the mutual understanding that civil authority is sovereign in the civil domain, just as the Church is sovereign in matters of religion.

We live today in a post-Christian era. Only God knows if, one day, Christ will once more be recognized as the Head and sovereign Lord of mankind. Before this can happen, the minds and hearts of men must be illuminated by divine truth and sanctified by divine grace. The Catholic Church continues, therefore, its work of teaching and sanctifying. Every soul that is brought closer to God is a step toward the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Thus the Church labors tirelessly to, one day, restore all things in Christ.

Reprinted with permission from the Society of Saint Pius X.