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| The closed Church in China |
For most of the 55 years of my life, I have always been blessed to have religious freedom. Why do I say most? Because I spent almost three weeks of my life in China where religious freedom does not exist. In fact, when we were in Guanghua there was a very nice-looking Catholic church behind a large iron fence with an ornate locked gate. We spent a lot of Saturday evening and most of Sunday around there waiting to see if it would ever open. It remained locked. Instead, we had to have a prayer service later that Sunday with another couple in our hotel room reading the day’s readings and praying our own liturgical service in private. It was a nice service for sure but it was not Mass. There was no Eucharist. We are truly blessed in this country right now to have the freedom of religion that we experience. So blessed I think we sometimes take it for granted. We can come to Church on Sunday or even on Saturday and it fulfills our weekly obligation. Churches are reasonably easy to get to and most have multiple Masses each weekend. We have true religious freedom in our country right now. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility”. That is so true with our faith as well. We are free to choose Catholicism and we must remain true to that choice; all of it, not just some of it. We are free to choose to focus more on our current life in this world and we are also free to choose to focus on eternity in heaven while spending our time on this world. That brings us to the quote from Jesus in today’s Gospel:
My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here.
Jesus most certainly lived in this world but his kingdom was not an earthly kingdom but a Heavenly one instead. This earthly kingdom is a temporary one, our Heavenly kingdom never goes away, it is eternal.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.
Alas, however, we are currently stuck here on Earth. While on Earth we will never be perfect human beings due to our fallen nature (thanks Adam and Eve). Only when we get to heaven will we be fully human as God meant us to be, then we will be perfected. So did the Jewish scholars of Jesus’ time want an Earthly or Heavenly savior? Most of them wanted to be freed from oppression from the Romans. They wanted their life on the Earthly kingdom to be a better one instead of focusing on the Heavenly Kingdom. I can certainly see why they could have made this mistake thinking that Jesus would have kingship and glory on earth based on our reading today from Daniel:
the one like a Son of man received dominion, glory, and kingship; all peoples, nations, and languages serve him
Jesus, instead of coming to deliver the Jews from the oppression of the Romans here on earth, came to bring us deliverance from the oppression of sin and from the evil one so we need to learn how to gain this deliverance and Jesus himself tells us in today’s Gospel:
For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
Now we need to stop focusing on the Jewish leaders of the past and turn towards us. How do we listen to Jesus’ voice and belong to that truth he speaks of? Next week we begin the Advent season. We need to heed the words of Isaiah, the words of John the Baptist:
prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
If you are hosting Thanksgiving this week you are probably doing a lot of preparing for your guests. Straightening up around the house. At our house, we even went so far as to not just clean up but to paint our dining room and kitchen! Lots of preparations go into these things. Advent begins a season of preparation and we decorate and clean our houses to prepare to celebrate when Christ first came to earth over 2020 years ago but we also need to clean and prepare our souls. Make it a point sometime between now and Christmas to get to confession and make it a good confession. Once you have confessed your sins try to get to Mass and receive the Eucharist as soon as possible. Pray, visit an adoration chapel near you, and spend time there praising Jesus for all he has given us, especially our freedom of religion. Remember on this Holy Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe that he is indeed King of the Universe but what really matters to Jesus Christ is that he is the Lord and King of our hearts. Pray that we may become more focused on the Heavenly kingdom that Jesus won for us than on the earthy kingdom where we reside now. I couldn’t say it better than St. Jean Vianney:
“O my dear parishioners, let us endeavor to get to heaven! There we shall see God. How happy we shall feel! If the parish is converted we shall go there in procession with the parish priest at the head. … We must get to heaven!”
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