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 Jubilee of Mercy: Solemnity of Christ, King of the Universe Scott 1638 (2016) This past Sunday, the Church celebrated the Feast of Christ the King, more formally entitled “The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe”. This year marks the centennial of the formal establishment of the feast day, which was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 with the encyclical “Quas Primas”. The feast marks the final Sunday on the liturgical calendar prior to the beginning of Advent next Sunday. In 2016, Vatican City issued the stamp shown above to call attention to the Solemnity. It was part of the fourth and final two-stamp set issued during 2016 for the Special Jubilee Year of Mercy. “Quas Primas” came during a period of increased secularization and nationalism in the early 20th century and was written less than 10 years after the end of World War I. During this time, a series of revolutions and national upheavals occurred across Europe, leading to the downfalls of a number of kingdoms and empires, including the houses of the Hohenzollerns (in Germany in 1917), the Romanovs (in Russia in 1917), and the Ottomans (in Turkey in 1922), among others. Against this backdrop, the encyclical underscores the enduring sovereignty of a king “whose kingdom shall have no end”: Jesus Christ. Pope Pius states in “Quas Primas”: “Manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics; and we said further that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations.”Attempts to establish a feast day for “Christ the King” first started in 1870; however, they were rejected since the Church had recently established a feast for the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The cause was taken up again in the early 20th century, spearheaded by a French woman, Marthe de Noaillat. Rather than taking her request to the pope and following the usual Vatican bureaucracy, she took her request to local bishops and laypeople. Her efforts garnered worldwide support and gained the attention of the pope. As a result, he was convinced to establish the new feast day. Pope Pius XI announced his intention to establish the feast at a Mass on the last day of the holy year of 1925, a Mass where Marthe and her husband were invited as guests of honor. REFERENCES: |
