Our Catholic liturgical year follows a rhythmic cycle. It points us toward beginnings and ends and, in so doing, emphasizes an important truth that can only be grasped through faith. We are fast approaching the Thirty Fourth or last Sunday in the Church year and we celebrate the Feast of the Solemnity of Jesus Christ the Sovereign King.

Our Liturgical seasons offer us a way to receive time as a gift. Their celebration can help us to grow in the life of grace. They invite us to walk with the Lord in a way of life infused with supernatural meaning. The liturgical seasons help us mark time with those deeper truths that matter most. Human beings have always marked time by significant events. The real question is not whether we will mark time, but how we will do so. What events and what messages are we proclaiming in our calendaring?  For the Christian, time is not meant to be a tyrant, somehow ruling over us. Rather, it is to be a teacher, instructing us, a series of invitations to allow the Lord to be our King, to reign in our real, daily lives. Rather than an enemy, time is to be a companion, a friend. It is a path along which the redemptive loving plan of a timeless God is revealed and received. In Christ, time is now given back to us as a gift, a field of choice and a path to holiness and human flourishing.

Time is heading somewhere. Christians mark time by the great events of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are always moving forward and toward His loving return.

As we progress through liturgical time we are invited to experience the great events of faith. Through our readings and liturgical prayer, we are invited during this last few weeks of the year to reflect on the last things—death, judgment, heaven and hell. We do so in order to change, to be converted, and thus to enter more fully into the Divine plan.

It is no coincidence that our Feast, the Feast of Christ the King and the last week of the year passes through the secular Feast of Thanksgiving this year. There is no separation for the believer between the secular and the Sacred. In the great event of the Incarnation and the fullness of the Paschal Mystery, all is made new. We do not bring God into time, He is its author. We are invited by grace to come to acknowledge that He is and then receive His “created time” as a gift, a good, to be given back to Him through living our lives in Christ for the sake of the world. Thanksgiving is a great Feast made even fuller in the meaning for the Christian. The word Eucharist means Thanksgiving. Let us walk through the last few weeks of the liturgical year and join with those whom we love around the table of Thanksgiving, and then let us walk the way of faith into the new Liturgical Season, Advent, getting ourselves and the world of our own time ready for the coming of Christ the King. It is all gift and I am most grateful!


Fr. Brian Sullivan