Divine Dialogue of God with the Soul

My Dear Good People,

Recently I spent two hours watching the marriage of Crown Prince Frederik and Mary Elizabeth Donaldson of Australia which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2004. The pomp and circumstance was breathtaking. One day Frederik will likely become the reigning king of Denmark. This ceremony was watched by millions of people in the West who have never known a king in their lives. While in most countries where there is a king he is only a figurehead, still, the coronation of a king or the marriage of a lovely woman to the Prince or the King of any country, regardless of its size, is breathtaking to any Westerner. Little girls love to play ‘Princess,’ and all children want to build sand castles at the water’s edge. What accounts for this mystique which seems to be inherent in all our children here in the United States, though we have never had a real princess, and still less a real king?

As Catholics, we know that our hearts are made for royalty. Before all and after all, we are sons and daughters of the King who chose to be born a child in Bethlehem and to reign from the Cross, long before He would ever come in majesty. We have been made for Him, and He is most at home in the human heart. Once a year, on this last Sunday of the liturgical year, we are reminded by the Church of our having been grafted into the Royal Family. And haven’t we always known that, somewhere in the depths of our heart?

Today we are invited to renew our relationship with Him by once again calling to mind our baptism into the Body of Christ. So we wish we had worthy gifts to offer Him. But He asks only one thing: that we present to Him our emptiness, our nothingness in the face of His Beauty and Fullness.  How can this be a fitting gift for our King? The answer lies in Paul’s letter to the Philippians 2:5-11: Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but having emptied Himself, took the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the Name which is above every other Name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

May you rejoice in this solemn Feast of Jesus, our King.

Have a Blessed Thanksgiving this week.