Nov. 24, 2013: Solemnity of Christ the King

What percentage of people in America do you think believes in God? Since the 1940’s, Gallup organization has been asking Americans, “Do you believe in God,” and consistently more than 9 in 10 Americans still say “yes” to this question. So it is popular in America to say that “I believe in God.” But I wonder if the same percentage of people would still say “yes” if they were asked, “Do you believe in God who asks you to abandon your name, your reputation, your health, your possessions, those you love, and remain faithful to Him? Do you profess this God to be your Lord and your King?”

A few days ago, I spoke with Kitty Cleveland, a beautiful singer from Mandeville, about coming to our parish and sing one of the Divine Mercy masses during Lent. Her spiritual songs are inspired particularly by her late father, Carl Cleveland who was a well-known attorney in New Orleans and an ordained Catholic deacon. He was arrested and convicted of a federal crime and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was removed from serving as a deacon and disbarred. Kitty wrote a song titled, “Surrender,” about his ordeal and what her family went through.

I had it all: fortune, power, acclaim,
Worldly success, a respectable name;
But then they vanished, illusions of safety,
My spirit was crushed, nothing worldly could save me.

How could this happen? They’ve taken my life.
No justice found, hope barely alive.
My heart was broken, my spirit despairing,
I cried out, My God, why have You forsaken me?

On this feast day of Christ the King, the Church asks us to place ourselves at Calvary. Here Jesus is stripped of all earthly reputations and even his life. On each side of Jesus is crucified two thieves who in reality represent each of us.
At the end of our lives, we are stripped of everything that we worked so hard for--our name, our reputation, our possessions, our health, our loved ones. We come face to face with the stark truth; although we call ourselves Christian or Catholic, we lived all of our lives for ourselves and not for God. We may be like the unrepentant thief and say, “I attended mass every day, I gave my money to the church, I gave money to the poor, I tried to be nice to others...I deserve to be saved. I deserve Heaven.” But the repentant thief on the other side of Jesus says, “I have done all those things, but I can’t fool God! I know who I lived for… myself! I don’t deserve Heaven. Jesus, it’s only your mercy that can save me. Forgive me of all my sins. Look kindly upon me.”

It is in our nature to want a kind of God who who will always be on our side--to come to bless our projects, bless our dreams, and miraculously heal us whenever we are sick. We forget the image of God that Prophet Jeremiah saw, where a potter took a lump of clay and shaped it into a vessel. The potter then collapsed the vessel and reshaped it to something else. St. Paul reiterates this when he says, “A potter has the right to do what he wants to with his clay, doesn't he? He can make something for a special occasion or something for ordinary use from the same lump of clay.” (Rom. 9:21) We have the tendency to refuse to be mastered by anyone. The stark truth is that we are not the potter -- Heavenly Father is. Whatever the Father does with us, is for His greater glory and not for ours. There is a Catholic hymn about the potter and his clay and the lyrics to the first verse are:

Abba, Father.
You are the potter; we are the clay, the work of your hands.
Mold us, mold us and fashion us
into the image of Jesus, your Son, of Jesus, your Son.

Kitty Cleveland’s father also came to that understanding before he died with cancer. Kitty finished her song, “Surrender” with the following words:

Then came the peace touched so deeply by Your mercy,
I lost my pride and found
You’re all I need.
You rescued me, felt Your love in my surrender,
I reached my greatest height down on my knees.