The dark November sky is torn open by the sudden flare of this feast at year’s end. Christ himself foretold it: “As the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man…coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory…. He will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Mt 24:27-30).
Climax of the liturgical year
The Solemnity of Christ the King not only points us to the endtime; this one final outburst of celebration contains and recalls the vast, rich tapestry of the entire liturgical year. Within the conflagration of Christ’s ultimate splendor we find the Epiphany star, the furtive gleam of king’s gold, and the fragile lights from the tapers of Candlemas Day. The newborn fire of the Easter Vigil burns here, with its flame atop the Paschal candle. We named it “Christ our Light,” and reached up our myriad small candles to hallow our baptismal vows with its leaping life. Moving through the season of the Holy Spirit’s lucent tongues, we came to summer’s peak and the hour of ultimate human glory when his Mother and ours was caught up to heaven and robed in light as in a garment, borrowed from Tabor. And at her feet, illumining the face of love that still and always bends over us, were set the countless candles of the saints—All Saints.
Christ, Victor King, subsumes all time, transcends all space. “Christ yesterday and today…the beginning and the end…all time belongs to him…and all the ages,” we heard at the Easter Vigil. And in the Office of Christ the King we read, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil 2:10), and from Revelation, “Once I was dead but now I live—forever and ever. I hold the keys of death and the netherworld” (1:18).
The harrowing of hell
What was the hell to which Christ descended after his death? Today “hell” evokes a place of punishment for the damned, referred to by Christ and corresponding to the Hebrew Gehenna and the Greek Tartarus. Originally, however, “hell” was a region of darkness, believed to be below the surface of the earth at the center of the globe, where all the dead were consigned. Toward the end of the Old Testament period, the notions of retribution and final judgment led the Jews to distinguish between the lot of the good and the evil. Sheol was then used to indicate the abode of the just, called Hades by the Greeks and Limbo by later Christians.
As the Church formulated her teaching, the body of the faithful absorbed it, and in the mid-6th century iconography took up the theme. The harrowing, or plundering, of hell is a thrilling scene, reproduced in sacred art and literature through the ages. A luminous and triumphant Christ stands athwart his cross at the entrance to the netherworld, where a vast crowd of patriarchs, prophets and other Old Testament figures await him. He grasps the hand of a kneeling Adam to draw him forth from his tomb, while Eve kneels suppliantly just behind Adam, her face worn but beautiful. In an ancient homily for Holy Saturday Christ speaks. Majestic Victor King, he has lost nothing of his character of Good Shepherd. “I am your God,” he says to Adam, “who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise…. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place.”
Sharing the victory
In the glory of his Resurrection and Ascension to the Father, Christ is accompanied by his ransomed ones. “I will give the victor the right to sit with me on my throne, as I myself won the victory and took my seat beside my Father on his throne” (Rv 12:21). His coming is indeed like lightning, flashing out of the east, shining as far as the west. As time falls away and space is forever transcended, we too hope to be gathered out of all the places where we have wandered in the dark and cloudy day of this life, to be called to the side of Christ, our Victor King.
©Magnificat November 2000
