There is a noticeable contrast between the kingship depicted in the first reading (2 Samuel 5. 1-3) and kingship depicted in the gospel (Luke 23. 35-43). In the book of Samuel (1 Samuel 18. 6-8), we get an insight into the kind of king Israel longed for, when David returned from battle. I quote: "When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with tambourines and lutes. As they danced, they sang: "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands". And this refrain of course angered king Saul, who from that point onwards, scripture tells us, kept a jealous eye on David. A very different kingship is depicted in the gospel. Here, the leaders scoffed at Jesus, they mocked him: "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God."
That's our king. The one we are called to worship, and that's the type of kingship we are called to live and embrace. When we were baptized, we were anointed priest, prophet and king, with sacred chrism. These are the three principal offices found in the Old Testament, and they are all summed up in the Person of Christ. He is the priest and the victim who offers himself on the altar of the cross for the salvation of the world; he is the final prophet because he is Truth Itself, the Word of the Father; and he is the true son of David, the king of kings. But what kind of king is he? He is a king who overcomes his enemies through the power of the cross. He does not come in military and political power; rather, he defeats the kingdom of darkness in "weakness", for "the weakness of God is stronger than human strength" as St. Paul said (1 Corinthians 1. 25). For human beings, dying is loss, it is defeat, but for Christ, who is light and life, dying is victory and power. And our dying becomes light, life, and victory in him.
Christ did not redeem us from sin and death through his Sermon on the Mount, nor did he redeem us through the miracles he worked, or the parables he taught. He redeemed us by his suffering and death, by the offering of himself on Good Friday. And following our king means nothing other than taking up our cross, which is a sharing in his suffering, and in doing so we share in his work of saving. His kingship is the secret to our identity, who we really are and who we are meant to be.
Today marks the end of the liturgical year, and the readings focus our attention on this unique kingship, and next week marks the beginning of the liturgical year, Advent, which is a penitential season in which we prepare for the birth of our king. You wouldn't know that it is a penitential season looking at the stores and malls and listening to the radio, etc. It seems we've begun to celebrate Christmas already. But advent is a silent penitential preparation for the birth of this king, whose throne is the cross on which he died and in doing so conquered the darkness of sin and death, the one enemy that man was unable to defeat.
German theologian Karl Rahner said that the greatest glories of the Church are and remain completely unknown and unrecognized by all the members of the visible Church. These people will not be canonized. Such unique individuals are given a profound share in the suffering and humiliation of Christ, who was also unrecognized by the religious leaders of Israel and the people in this gospel today. One or two of those glories of the Church might very well be among us here. We wouldn't know it, and if it is you, you wouldn't know it. But the suffering lives of such people share deeply in Christ's work of redemption, in winning souls for God. It's a very mysterious thing how this works, how it is that Christ takes our sufferings, difficulties, frustrations, sacrifices, humiliations, and joins them to himself, to his own offering to the Father, in order that God the Father may deliver someone else from darkness, just as the sacrifice of St. Stephen was offered by Christ to God the Father in order to transform Saul to Paul, in the New Testament.
Why did Jesus put up with all this mockery and rejection? Basically, to show us that life in him is in many ways a learning to put up with one another. Life in him is about enduring, suffering, patiently putting up with one another. No one is exempt from this. We're always aware of the difficulty of having to put up with certain others, but we are typically not aware of how difficult it has been for others to put up with us. But God does reveal it to us gradually, He reveals to us our flaws and imperfections slowly and piecemeal, to the degree that we are open and able to handle it. But becoming aware of that is important because it makes it much easier for us to accept the prospect of having to endure one another patiently, and most of all, the more we are emptied of illusions about ourselves, the more space we create within us for God to fill.