Fr. JC Maximilian

This has been a particularly busy week, here in the parish. Last night we hosted a concert, “A Classic Fall Night.” This has been a dream of Fr. Mick, the administrator, to have several of his friends who sing opera come and give a concert. I was a lot of work to put together. Thankfully, the parishioners here at St. Theresa’s are very generous with their time and talent, so we had a lot of help. We sold over 800 tickets, and raised close to $9000 for our new parish center.

As I mentioned, Fr. Mick has several friends who have trained as classical singers, who have sung in operas around the world. They very generously agreed to come to perform. In addition, we have some tremendously talented people here in the parish, so we augmented the program with our “local” talent — a 15-year-old self-taught prodigy on the organ, a 14-year-old flutist, and a brother (12 years old) and sister (14 years old) who are very talented singers (the young lady is also incredibly talented on the Celtic Harp, having won the US National competition this past year, and finished 4th at the International competition in Ireland). It really turned into the cultural event of the year here in Tuckerton/Little Egg Harbor. People were talking about it for weeks. It was a smashing success. Oh yeah, Bishop Smith attended as well.

I say all this by way of an excuse. I did not write my homily this week. Of course I prayed over the readings, and looked at various commentaries, and I knew what I wanted to preach about. I just never got a chance to actually sit down and write it out. I had a few notes, and preached off the cuff. So what follows is my attempt to reproduce what I preached on; the fruits of my contemplation.

Jesus Christ makes an unique, and unambiguous claim, namely that He is the King of all the Universe, the King of everything that exists. He does not claim to be one wise man among many, nor one philosopher among many. He does not claim to be just a good teacher, or exceedingly compassionate and generous person. No, Jesus Christ make the claim that He is the King of all the Universe, that all nations will come before Him to be judged, that all the angels in heaven make up His royal court, and that He holds in His hands the eternal destiny of every man and woman of ALL time.

There is no other way of understanding today’s Gospel reading. Now, that means that we face an important decision in deciding what to think about Jesus. Either we accept His claim of being Christ the King, the King of all life and history, or we must conclude that Jesus was a madman. He is either the most sane person the world has ever known, or He is a lunatic who is completely out of touch with reality.

Bill Maher, the comedian — or at least he is claims to be a comedian, though I personally have never found him to be funny but rather just a very angry man — has gone public as to his decision concerning Jesus’ claim. Thinking himself an important social commentator, Bill Maher put out a movie about a month or two ago, called Religulous, in which he says that anyone who believes in God is a complete fool. For about 2-hours in the film, Mr. Maher mocks anyone who claims that they believe in God, in general, and Jesus in particular. Mr. Maher thinks that the story of Jesus is just a plagiarized retelling of the ancient Egyptian myth about the god Osiris. In the myth, Osiris dies each fall, but each spring comes back to life making the land fertile. For Bill Maher belief in Jesus is ridiculous; at best Jesus was a good teacher, but was essentially a madman because of His claims to be God

So, is Bill Maher right? We have to look at the evidence in order to make a reasonable decision. The first thing that we notice is that Jesus is nothing like Bill Maher’s example of Osiris. Like all of these ancient myths, no one claims to have been alive when Osiris was killed and then came back to life. All of these myths occur long before there were any human beings. Jesus, on the contrary, was an historical person. Even His enemies acknowledged that Jesus actually existed. He was born at a particular time in history. He spoke and did certain actions. There are just so many witnesses, even those who did not accept Jesus’ claim to be the only-begotten Son of God, who attest to these words and actions of Jesus.

So, I really do not think that there can be any serious thoughts to Jesus just being a myth. But was He just a madman? Has any other lunatic or madman ever founded an organization or movement that has not only lasted, but grown for 2000 years? And during all that time, the followers of Jesus have stayed faithful to Him; not just to His teaching, but to Him, in a personal way. Countless number of men and women have completely dedicated their lives to Jesus, often leaving all behind to follow Him. Thousands have followed Jesus so closely, and had so much faith in His claim and promise to His followers, that they willingly died for Jesus.

Looking at this evidence, it seems apparent that the claims of Jesus are true. He is the co-eternal Son of God. God, the Father, did love the world so much that He sent His only-begotten Son into the world. In fact, God continues to so love the world that His Son, Jesus, continues to be present among us. Jesus is the Christ, He is our King, and the King of all the world. As the Second Vatican Council states; “Christ is the Lord and goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart and the fulfillment of all its yearning” (Gaudium et spes, #45).

As His followers, we share in the uniqueness of Christ Jesus. We see this uniqueness in today’s Gospel. It shows just how united Jesus’ two great commandments — to love God with all our hearts, minds and soul, and to love our neighbors as ourself. Jesus says in todays Gospel that what we either do, or fail to do, for the least of our brothers and sisters we fail to do to our brothers and sisters, we either do or fail to do for Him. When we fail to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, cloth the naked, visit the sick we fail to see Jesus, our King, right there in our midst. When we do feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, cloth the naked and give compassion to the sick we are saying “Yes, Jesus, I see you! You are my King!” It is not enough to be nice. As followers of Christ, we are called to be holy. To be holy is to live the fact that Jesus Christ is our King.

We cannot sit on the fence forever. We need to make the choice. Do we accept Jesus’ claim to be our King, and the King of all the world, or do we see Him as a madman? We are called, as followers of Christ, to boldly declare our belief that Jesus Christ is our King to all the Bill Mahers of the world.