Brothers and sisters. Before we begin today’s reflection, we invite you to click on the photo in this post, to view one of the beautiful windows here at Our Lady of Silence Abbey.
On this final Sunday of the liturgical year, we stand before a mystery that seems, at first, to overturn our instincts about kingship. The Church asks us to contemplate Christ as King of the Universe — not enthroned upon marble, nor surrounded by the symbols of worldly might, but revealed in a place where power appears to have failed entirely. It is in that place of exposure, of seeming defeat, that the nature of His kingship is made known.
The Gospel today brings us to a hill outside the city, where human judgement has pronounced its final word and where mockery carries more weight than praise. Christ reigns from a position the world would never choose. His crown is not crafted by artisans but forced upon Him by violence. His throne is rough wood. His court consists of bystanders, soldiers, and one man who suffers beside Him. Everything seems wrong — yet it is precisely here that something beautiful occurs: a heart opens, a plea is spoken, and mercy flows.
In that moment, we see that Christ’s kingship is not built on subduing others, but on gathering the lost. He does not defend Himself. He does not retaliate. He listens. He turns His face — already marked by the world’s rejection — toward a man who has nothing to offer except honesty and longing. The Kingdom reveals itself in a gaze, a response, a promise. It is not enforced; it is given.
For us, living many centuries later, the temptation remains to imagine Christ’s rule as something external — a kind of divine authority that acts upon the world from above. But the scene we contemplate today invites us inward. It reminds us that His reign begins wherever a person allows truth to penetrate the heart. Christ is King not because He conquers by force, but because He alone enters the deepest poverty of the human condition and does not turn away. He reigns by descending, by sharing, by loving in the very place where love seems most impossible.
Here in the quiet of the abbey, with the November winds running across the fields and the early darkness closing in, the Gospel has a different texture. It lands more gently, perhaps, and yet more seriously. Christ’s kingship is not far away; it is close, intimate, often hidden beneath the surfaces of our lives. It is found in those moments when we recognise our own need — our own failures, our own longing to be remembered — and turn to Him not with eloquence but with simplicity.
The man beside Jesus did not have a lifetime of holiness to present. He had only a desire that flickered into speech. And the King received it. That is the throne we approach: a throne of mercy, where the greatest dignity we can offer is our willingness to be seen as we truly are.
So today, as this liturgical year draws to its close, let us ask for the grace to acknowledge Christ as King not only with our words but with our vulnerability, our trust, our willingness to follow Him into the places within us that feel most like Calvary — the places where hope trembles. And let us carry with us the quiet assurance that His kingship does not fade or falter. It is steady. It is compassionate. It bends low to meet us.
May we recognise His reign in the faces of those who suffer, in the lives of those overlooked, in the silence where He waits. And may we live under His gentle rule, confident that whenever we turn to Him — even with the faintest prayer — the King who hung on the hill listens, remembers, and welcomes.