“The Crown of Love” A Reflection for Christ the King

Today we celebrate Christ the King. Yet I want to begin with something that may surprise us: believing in a crucified God is not easy. Perhaps we’ve heard it so often that it no longer startles us, but if we stop and look at it honestly, it challenges every sense of human logic.

The kings of this world have high thrones, military strength, symbols of power, crowns and robes. But when the Gospel shows us our King, what we see is something entirely different: a man nailed to a cross, hanging between criminals, humiliated, abandoned, seemingly defeated.
And this raises a sincere question in the heart:
How can that be the image of our King?
How can such a scene give anyone hope, trust, or security?

Saint Paul once wrote with disarming clarity: “We preach Christ crucified—scandal to some, foolishness to others.”
If the cross doesn’t unsettle us just a little, perhaps we’re not looking at it with full honesty.

Maybe because the cross is so difficult to accept, we often reshape Jesus into something more “reasonable,” more like a king as we imagine one should be. And so we see Christ portrayed with brilliant crowns, velvet capes, golden thrones. There is nothing wrong with these images—beauty can lift the soul—but they can accidentally distance us from the real mystery:
our King did not reign from a throne, but from a cross.

I once heard a story about a priest visiting a very ill man in a hospital. He noticed the man would pray quietly, with a serene devotion.
The priest asked him,
“Do you pray a lot for God to heal you?”

The man smiled and said,
“Father, I don’t ask Him to take the cross away anymore… I ask Him to walk with me. If He is with me, I am already saved.”

After he died, his family shared that they had never seen such peace on his face as when he prayed. His final moments were filled with calm. He had found Christ on the cross.

This man believed in a crucified God… and that belief made him free—just like the good thief, who recognized his King at the very moment when others saw only defeat.

Even today there is a real temptation to avoid the cross. Some Christian communities prefer not to mention it at all—too negative, too uncomfortable, too weak. They prefer a Christ who is always victorious according to human standards: a coach, a motivator, a spiritual entrepreneur.
But this is not the Gospel.
Remove the cross, and you remove Christ.
A Christianity without the cross is simply a Christianity without Christ.

So why, if it is so difficult, do we insist on contemplating a crucified God?

Because the cross is where God reveals Himself most truthfully.

There—where everything looks like failure—God hides His victory.
There—where He seems absent—His love is most intense.
There—where the world sees shame—He shows glory.
There—where pain is real—He reigns with a love that never retreats.

The good thief understood this.
He saw what no one else saw:
a King who saves not by coming down from the cross,
but by staying on it out of love.

And because he recognized that truth, Jesus answered him:
“Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

As the liturgical year comes to an end, perhaps this is the invitation placed before us:

To look again at the true King—
the One who does not dominate, but loves;
the One who does not impose, but offers His life;
the One who does not escape suffering,
but transforms it into a doorway to Paradise.

To recognize Him not only when He shines,
but also when He suffers.

Because whoever has learned to kneel before Christ crucified
will never kneel before any false god.

Amen.