I’m sure it’s all a coincidence but it did strike me as interesting that on the catholic feast day of All Saints (2nd November) at the other side of the Atlantic a huge, some say seismic, election is taking place – I’m writing this at 5pm, so the Americans are still inthe middle of it. The expectation is that many disappointed voters will use the opportunity to punish president Obama and his (for now) undelivered promises byvoting for an opposition candidate. At the same time in Britain a new Entente Cordiale is taking shape in a joint declaration of the British prime minister and the French president that says, among other things, that they will provide each other with the “floating airstrip” for their French- or American-built jet fighters. One would have hoped that the umbilical cord of the Channel Tunnel could have been strong enough a link to express and guarantee mutual interest and pursuit for peace. Anyway, whether or not one agrees with what is going on, at least it is done within the context of democratic rule,where there is a fairly accurate, be it far from perfect, system of checks and balanceswith public accountability on multiple levels.

Meanwhile the Church, in two weeks time, appropriately and purposefully, ends her liturgical year with the feast of Christ the King. All the Sunday readings of the five or six weeks leading up to that date increasingly prepare us for it, as a crescendo movement runs through these passages from Luke‘s Gospel. Their literary style moves from simple parable stories to accounts of actual meetings of Jesus to a full-fledged doomsday prophecy. Content-wise, the situation moves from secular to religious settings, dealing with an ever increasing number of people, until all are involved, when the world as they know it is predicted to come to an end. And that upsweep serves a very clear purpose; it deliberately wants to uproot people‘s thoughts and perceptions from their everyday life and socio-political reality. For the Kingdom that Jesus preaches “is not from this world” (John 18:36). Pilate didn‘t get it then, and we still have a very hard time understanding and accepting this.

That Kingdom, already, but not yet fully, present in this world, will eventually reach its fulfilment at the end, when time will cease to exist. At that moment women and men will no longer be subject to the natural and human laws and there will be no injustice and death anymore. However, in order to see and hear this Kingdom, Jesus says, we have to convert; we have to change our perspectives. We have to look and listen to him, for he doesn’t just know the way, he is the way. And it is only when we understand this that we will see God, in Christ, and will we be able to make the Kingdom come true. That invitation still stands, as it has since the beginnings of the Church, for us, here and now. To be able to recognise Jesus Christ as the eternal and universal King, we have to let go of our understanding of how the world and human societies work and should work, and listen to him instead. Then we can truly leave at the end of Mass and bring his peace by loving and serving our Lord.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bart is a Jesuit of the Netherlands province, studying at Heythrop Collegetowards his ordination to the priesthood next year. He lives in a Jesuit community in Sth.London