KINGSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST. - I. THE TITLE AND ITS MEANING. - The title of king is the one that seems best to express the universal primacy of Jesus Christ (v.). It was, in fact, conferred on him at the very moment of his conception: "He will reign forever over the house of Jacob and his kingdom will have no end" (Lk. 1:33). And it is also the title for which he was crucified: "Jesus the Nazarene, king of the Jews" (Jn. 19:19) — this Pilate had written, and willed that it remain written; nor did the double affront, which he thus fixed to the Cross, prevent him from being troubled by that title. It was, moreover, the only charge of which that mysterious condemned man had acknowledged the truth: "Are you a king? Yes, you have said it: I am" (ibid. 18:37). What he meant by this, the Roman procurator was not able to understand; but the Apostles grasped its full meaning when they received their mission from Jesus. "All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth" (Mt. 28:18-19), and St. Paul explained their common thought by writing that the Kingdom of Christ, extending to all authorities and all powers, would have no end on earth until everything, including death, had been subjected to him (1 Cor. 15:24-28). From that time the Church sings in its Creed: "His kingdom will have no end" (cuius regni non erit finis).
II. ORIGIN AND NATURE
This kingship presupposed in the one who attributed it to himself a superiority of a transcendent order. It can be considered as a kingship of conquest: Christ has redeemed us, he has shed his blood for us: "He has washed us from our sins in his blood and has made us his kingdom" (Rev. 1, 4-5); St. Paul exhorts us to give thanks to God for "having snatched us from the power of darkness to transfer us into the kingdom of his Son" (Col. 1, 13-14). Nevertheless his kingship depends essentially on the divine nature of his person; the hypostatic union caused it to be conferred on his human nature. Accordingly Jesus Christ professes to have received it from the Father: "And he has given him power to judge, because he is the son of man" (John 5, 27); St. Paul recalls that "God has subjected everything to him" (1 Cor. 15, 28). Properly speaking, the kingship in question resides in the human nature of Christ; otherwise one could not explain why he attributes it to himself on a personal title and acknowledges having received it from the Father: in his divine nature he had no need to receive it, because it was common to him with the other two persons of the Most Holy Trinity.
Christ the King, consequently, is the same God-Man, that is, the one who, owing his divine nature to the Father, received his human nature from the Virgin. But since he redeemed us in this nature and by its acts, so it is in that same nature, properly speaking, that he was invested with the threefold power in which every sovereignty is summed up: legislative, judicial and executive power. Therefore Christ the King is the man who promulgated the precepts of the Gospel, who by his miracles gave proof of his divinity, who founded the Church, who now sits in heaven at the right hand of the Father, and who, at the tribunal of Caiaphas, announced to his judges that they would see him return one day on the clouds of heaven. Deriving, therefore, from the very person of the Son of God, although conferred on his human nature through which he must exercise it, this kingship cannot be, and in fact is not, of the same order as that which is commonly exercised among men; it encompasses it and surpasses it. It could therefore have been exercised in all domains, because nothing, either in heaven or on earth, is withdrawn from the power of the God-Man; but since he came into this world only to establish in it the "Kingdom of God," Jesus did not attribute to himself and did not claim for himself the kingship except to the extent and under the form in which it serves the fulfillment of his mission; this mission, therefore, is not destined to supplant or annex the governments of the earth. Hence the Apostles, who labored to have it accepted, did not think at all of contesting for this reason the authority of the established powers: these too are willed by God and are feared only by evildoers (1 Pet. 2, 12-17; Rom. 13, 1-7). The same, moreover, Jesus Christ had already formally taught beforehand: if one must give to God what is God's, one must also give to Caesar what is Caesar's. He himself had acknowledged in Pilate the power to judge him; the criminal use that was made of this against him did not take away the fact that it came from above (John 10, 11). As for his own power, he had explained to the Roman procurator, it was of quite another nature. The kingship that he asserted belonged to him did not have as its object the interests of this world. From this point of view, although it was to be exercised in this world, it was not of this world, but was identified with the kingdom of truth; and he had come precisely to bear witness to the truth. To accept his kingship and submit to it one must be men of truth (ibid. 18, 36-37).
This is the word to which the Apostles and the Church refer when they speak of the kingship of Jesus Christ: it is essentially of a spiritual order. As the Preface of the Mass of Christ the King expressly recalls, "this eternal and universal kingdom, which extends to all creatures, is a kingdom of truth and of life, a kingdom of holiness and of grace, a kingdom of justice, of love and of peace." It is realized, in the proper sense, in the intellects by a firm adherence to the teachings of the Gospel, in the will by a total and trusting submission to its precepts, in the hearts by a generous dedication, capable of the sacrifice of life.
III. THE PROPER END OF THE KINGSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST AND ITS RELATIONS WITH CIVIL SOVEREIGNTY
It is impossible to err about the purpose to which the kingship of Jesus Christ is ordered. It is wholly of the supernatural order; the natural order too is involved, but only insofar as it can favor or hinder the realization of God's designs for humanity. The recognition of the kingship of Jesus Christ does not imply the establishment of a theocratic government on earth: heads of state do not receive their power from Christ the King, they are neither his delegates nor his lieutenants; the Pope, as vicar of Jesus Christ in spiritualibus, has no "direct" power over civil governments.
But the more the kingship of Jesus Christ is distinguished from civil authority, the more it is superior to it. It comes from another world and tends to lead there; by its nature and by its origin, it imposes itself on all and on each one; there is no one who is not bound to recognize it and to accept it in all its fullness. The "truth," of which it is the expression, casts its light on all the moral and religious activity of humanity, with the purpose of regulating it and ordering it wholly to its supernatural end. The Church, which has the charge of preserving, spreading and interpreting it, participates in its authority; she has from Jesus Christ himself the mission and the power to make it accepted; through her, this superhuman kingship is exercised and manifested. To the Church, therefore, belongs the task of choosing, determining, approving and applying the means proper to ensuring its radiance. Hence there derives for her, in the face of any government, an independence equal, one may say, to that of this kingship itself.
Therefore she is not only not hostile to them, but recognizes in civil governments an institution of divine origin, and hence teaches and inculcates respect for them. But since God, from whom all their power comes, has subordinated everything to the kingship of his Son, the Church, which is the instrument of this kingship, cannot be subject to them. Disorder, on the other hand, would arise when governments created obstacles for her in the fulfillment of her mission. Rather, they must, when the Church makes request of them and to the extent that she accepts it, lend her their aid. In doing this they do not deviate from their own end: they only recognize the supreme end, which their subjects must attain and to which it belongs to the Church alone to lead them. For this reason it is necessary for the Church to reach her subjects as they are, that is, not only as individuals, but as men made to live and in fact living in society; and since society in general and the particular societies that men form among themselves (first of all the family society) make constant appeals to their conscience, the Church cannot leave them without direction or help in those fields where the gravest responsibilities are often at stake. Hence for the Church the duty of promoting what is called the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ.
IV. THE SOCIAL KINGDOM OF JESUS CHRIST
By these terms one may understand a certain participation of various social groups in the worship and homage rendered to the person of Jesus Christ: worship and homage that must be accompanied, on pain of being vain and derisory, by a certain cooperation in the work of salvation pursued by the Son of God in the world. Consequently they create between the Church and the various States a union or alliance which, without confusing their domains, entails a certain interference of their activities. In seeking and applying itself to maintaining this union, the Church does not ask only that the possibility of exercising and making felt their influence over all that, depending on man, depends for that very reason on God, be recognized and left to the institutions of Christ; but she also intends to claim for men themselves the right they have not to be impeded, but rather to be helped by those who govern them, in attaining what constitutes their supreme end. The desired understanding between the two powers is therefore ordered to the advantage of those who are at the same time members of civil society and faithful of the Church.
But, however desirable and fruitful this understanding may be, it is not precisely in it that the social Kingdom of Jesus Christ consists or is manifested. In social life, as in the personal life of individuals, this Kingdom is essentially of an interior order. It consists first of all in the application of the religious and moral principles recalled or inculcated by Christ to the various contingencies of life. As Pius XII observed in his allocution of 10 Feb. 1952, to the people of Rome, it would be of no use to proclaim the divine fatherhood or kingship, if it were forbidden to intervene in any way in private or public life. It would be of no avail to be enthusiastic about the ideas of justice, charity, peace, if one had already decided beforehand to make no sacrifice on one's own part for these virtues. Consequently there is no Kingdom of Christ in families except insofar as he himself presides over their formation and the attainment of the ends that God has assigned to them; he does not preside over social relations in general except to the extent that he obtains the banishment of the exclusive pursuit of personal interest; there is no social Kingdom of Christ where there reigns the spirit of profit and domination, which stifles in souls even the most elementary feelings of humanity, or the spirit of greed, which suffers less from being deprived of goods than from seeing others better provided.
Whatever the field in which it is exercised, the k. of J. C. is not established except on the basis of a total adherence to the teachings of the Gospel, of a trusting acceptance of the directives of the Church, and of a charity that unites God and neighbor in an equally sincere and effective love. By this sign, as he said to his Apostles, Jesus Christ will always recognize those who truly accept that he reign in them and over them. - See pl. XXXI.