Dear Friends in Christ,

“Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

This weekend we celebrate Christ the King Sunday. This Sunday is the end of the liturgical year, a year-long journey that began last Advent. The journey is one of beauty, goodness, and truth. The goal of the liturgical year is to touch our hearts with the beauty of God’s love, and to change our lives with the goodness of a God who sacrifices everything for us. All of this, so that at the end of the journey we can confess what is true, that Jesus Christ is our Lord and our King.

I’ve heard it said, that if you want to evangelize someone, if you want someone to know Christ, do not start with knowledge and facts or “things that are true”, start with beauty and goodness. For example, rather than tell someone God is real, maybe go to a beach and look at the sunset and wonder out loud, “How does the beauty of some- thing like this exist?” Or, when at work and a co-worker asks you, “How was your weekend?” This is a great opportunity to share how God impacted your life.

This way of evangelization is how our Church works as well. The entire liturgical year has established what is good and beautiful, that we have a God who loved us enough to send his son, to live with us, to die, and to rise from the dead. All of this to save us and raise us to new life. Today, we are talking about what is true, because we have heard and seen already what is beautiful and what is good. The truth is that Jesus is our Savior, our Lord, and our King. The question now is, are we able to recognize the truth?

Pope Benedict XVI said, “The unredeemed state of the world consists… in the failure to recognize the truth.” Think about it, would the Pharisees and Jewish leaders have crucified Jesus if they had recognized the truth and knew he was God? Of course not…but they didn’t recognize him…can we recognize the truth? The truth is that Jesus is our King. And that means that our lives must conform and give witness to him.

“Bearing witness to the truth’ means giving priority to God and to his will over against” our interests and “the interests of the world and its powers” (Benedict XVI). We must be witnesses of the Truth. And this means we are witnesses of Christ. After a year of beautiful and good experiences of Christ, we now know and believe, that Jesus is The Way, The Truth, and The Life. May we testify to the truth, who is Jesus Christ, the person who brings God’s never-failing love into our lives, so that we might bring this truth to others.

In Christ’s love and friendship,

Fr. Stephen