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CHAPEL OF CHRIST THE KING
GUANAJATO, MEXICO
MEMORIAL OF SAINT LUCY, VIRGIN AND MARTYR
DECEMBER 13, 2001
Homily
aving celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in her Shrine
yesterday, we have made pilgrimage today to the Shrine of Christ
the King, Son of God and Son of Mary, to whom Our Lady of Guadalupe
is constantly leading us. The Mother of God, in her apparitions
to Blessed Juan Diego, Bishop Juan de Zumárraga and Juan
Bernardino, invites the children of America to place all of their
trust in the Child conceived in her womb, Jesus Christ, Godmade-
man for our salvation. She invites us to recognize in her Divine
Son the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, in which our Lord
assures us: “I am the Lord, your God, who grasps your right
hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I will help you’…I
will help you, says the Lord, your redeemer is the Holy One of
Israel.” (Reading I)
At the time of our Lady’s
apparitions, God’s children of what is now Mexico were suffering
greatly both from the practices of the native pagan religion and
of the Spanish conquerors; they were also suffering the effects
of their own sinfulness. The Mother of God, through her messenger
Blessed Juan Diego and her permanent apparition on his mantle,
invites the people of America to place all their trust in God
and in His commandments. In other words, she invites us to submit
ourselves completely to the reign of Christ the King, the Holy
One of Israel who helps us and guides along the way of life to
eternal life. The response was an unimaginable number of conversions
to the faith, and the conversion of individual lives through submission
to Christ the King.
II. On Monday, we celebrated the glorious victory
of Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro in martyrdom, because he
entrusted himself totally to Christ the King in opposition to
the secular regime which was persecuting Christ in His Church.
Blessed Father Pro resisted the secular reign which demanded that
he betray Christ and His Church, that he abandon his priestly
life and ministry. He trusted in Christ the King and served Him,
and chose to die rather than betray that trust.
Today, we celebrate the memory of
Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr, who consecrated her life completely
to Christ, her Bridegroom and King. When the Roman Emperor Diocletian,
in his persecution of Christ in His Church, demanded that she
deny the Kingship of Christ in her life, she chose death rather
than to betray Christ’s reign in her life. In a martyr’s
death she found true life and gave life to the Church. As her
name expresses, she was the light; the light of Christ shone in
her and she then became light for others. The many traditions
which have developed around her feast day celebrate the beauty
of Christ the Light shining forth in her life.
III. The Kingship of Christ, which we celebrate
today in the life of Saint Lucy, suffers violence, as Our Lord
Jesus instructs us in today’s Gospel. Being a servant of
Christ the King means suffering the violence of those who resist
His reign or who have rejected it. Christ reveals to us the profound
truth of our life in Him through His own Passion and Death.
Serving Christ means participation
in His Passion and Death, suffering the violence of death to our
self and to our selfish tendencies, fighting constantly the inclination
to sin, which we have inherited through the sin of our First Parents.
Christ, not I, must reign in my life. Christ reigns in my life
by the submission of my will to His, by the discipline of my attitude,
affections, desires, words and actions, in accord with His Sacred
Heart. Rightly we pray each day: “O Sacred Heart of Jesus,
make my heart like unto thine.”
IV. How can we more fully and firmly establish
the reign of Christ in our lives? By enthroning Him as the King
of our heart. In fact, we enthrone Christ as Our King each time
we receive Him–Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity–in Holy
Communion. Our participation in the Sacrifice of the Mass is the
offering of our whole life to God the Father, by uniting our life
to Christ, submitting our whole being to Him and His Way of the
Cross and Resurrection.
Christ, enthroned in our hearts
through the Holy Eucharist, must reign in us at all times and
in every place in which we find ourselves. Our Lord Jesus has
taught us that He dwells with us always in the Church through
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. (cf. Mt 28; Jn ) From the beginning,
the Church has understood that her life comes from Christ alone,
from His pierced Heart on Calvary. She has understood that Christ
the King extends His gentle reign through the graces which flow
from His glorious Heart consumed with love for us. In the violence
of the struggle with Satan and our inclination to sin, there is
always the love of Christ, pouring out from His Sacred Heart,
to heal, comfort and sustain us.
To express the reign of Christ the
King in our lives and to remind us of the complete submission
of our life to His rule, we enthrone the image of the Sacred Heart
in our homes, businesses, schools, places of recreation and other
places of our daily activity. Often, too, we carry the image of
His Sacred Heart on our person to remind us that we belong completely
to Him, that He is with us in the struggle and the battle to be
faithful to Him and extend His reign in all things. In whatever
we are doing, the love of Christ must rule us. Through the apparitions
to Saint Margaret Mary in the seventeenth century, our Lord Jesus
asked that we consecrate ourselves to His Sacred Heart and enthrone
the image of His Sacred Heart in our homes as the sign of His
faithful and enduring love for us and as a reminder of our consecration,
especially in times of trial or temptation. The Twelve Promises
which He made to those who consecrate their lives to His Sacred
Heart express wonderfully the eternal effect–in our lives
and in our world–of the gentle reign of Christ.
During the cruel persecution of
Christ in His Church in Mexico at the end of the 19th Century
and well into the Twentieth Century, the faithful of this beloved
land understood that Christ alone was their King, that Christ
the King would sustain them in the battle with the forces which
demanded that they betray Christ and His rule in their lives.
This Shrine of Christ the King, built for the Enthronement of
the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Mexican nation, stands as a permanent
act of faith in God’s unfailing love for us in Christ and
as a holy place at which those who come here on pilgrimage, either
physically or spiritually through prayer, receive the grace to
submit their lives more fully to the Kingship of Christ and so
to extend His reign in the world, His social reign, by which we
built up the civilization of love.
V. Blessed to be on pilgrimage to this sacred
place, ask for the grace to submit your life more fully to the
gentle reign of Christ the King. Carry Christ, who now comes to
us in the Holy Eucharist, into the world, so that He may conquer
sin and give His life to all, so that our world may be prepared
to be restored to God the Father by Christ at His final Coming.
If you have already consecrated
yourself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, renew your consecration
today. If not, prepare yourself to make the consecration as a
particular fruit of your pilgrimage. If you have already enthroned
the Sacred Heart of Jesus in your home, renew the practice of
prayer before the image of the Sacred Heart, by which you place
your heart completely in the Heart of Christ, by which Christ’s
love warms the coldness of your heart and purifies your heart
of every wrong affection and desire. If you have not enthroned
the Sacred Heart in your home, make the resolution to do so when
you return home.
VI. As we prepare to receive Christ the King
into our midst in the most wonderful way in which He dwells with
us in the Church–the Sacrament of His true Body and Blood–let
us open our hearts completely to Him. By receiving our Lord into
our hearts, may He reign in our lives always.
O Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe, pray
for us, that Christ, Your Son and Your King, may be our King to
conquer sin in us and to win in us the victory of eternal life.
Saint Lucy, pray for us that the
light of Christ may illuminate our thoughts and the love of Christ
inflame our hearts, so that we may be His light and love for the
world.
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