“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.” John 18:37 

The Solemnity of Christ the King was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 with his encyclical Quas Primas (translated as “In the First”). He wrote, it has long been a common custom to give to Christ Jesus the metaphorical title of “King,” because of the high degree of perfection, whereby He excels all creatures. Christ Jesus is said to reign “in the hearts of the faithful,” both by reason of the keenness of His intellect and the extent of His knowledge, and also because He is the very Truth, and it is from Him that truth must be obediently received by all. He reigns, too, in the wills of men and women, for in Him the human will was perfectly and entirely obedient to the Holy Will of God, and further by His grace and inspiration, He so subjects our free-will as to incite us to the most noble endeavors. He is King of hearts, too, by reason of His “charity which exceed all knowledge.” And His mercy and kindness which draw all men and women to Him, for never has it been known, nor will it ever be, that humanity be loved so much and so universally as Christ Jesus. But if we ponder this matter more deeply, we cannot but see that the title and the power of King belongs to Christ as Man in the strict and proper sense too. For it is only as Man that He may be said to have received from the Father “power and glory and a kingdom,” since the Word of God, as consubstantial with the Father, has all things in common with Him, and therefore has necessarily supreme and absolute dominion over all things created. The Kingship of Christ which we have found in the Old Testament is even more clearly taught and confirmed in the New. The Archangel, announcing to the Virgin that she would bear a Son, says that “the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David his father, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” 

 It was surely right then, in view of the common teaching of the sacred books, that the Catholic Church, which is the kingdom of Christ on earth destined to be spread among all and all nations, should with every token of veneration salute her Author and Founder in her annual liturgy, who is Christ Jesus, as King and Lord, and as King of Kings.