A Homily for the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
Readings: 2 Samuel 5:1-3  Colossians 1:12-20  Luke 23:35-43

It is the most painful memory of my childhood. I wish I could report that it was some sorrow that I suffered, but I am the one who produced the pain. And for one who was so dear to me! 

My family was visiting my uncle and aunt, who had no children. They doted on us kids, and this visit saw the confluence of two events. My beloved Grandma Klein was visiting them, and it was my birthday. I do not remember my age. I had not yet entered school.

My grandmother could not afford to give her grandchildren birthday presents, though she lavished us with candies and homemade chocolate chip cookies, and once, on a trip to the local five-and-dime, she even purchased pinwheels for us. But on this day, perhaps because of the confluence of her visit and my birthday, she gave me a gift. 

I eagerly tore away the wrapping paper and opened a slender box to find a pen and pencil set. Without a thought for the pain it would cause, I threw the gift out the front door. 

I do not remember being punished. I hope that I was. I do remember my uncle and aunt comforting my grandmother, who did not display any emotion that I could detect. I was made to apologize. My grandmother, as always, was gracious with me. She met my cruelty with kindness.

There is always a gap between giver and gift. The two are not the same, which is why the French philosopher Jacques Derrida said that there can be no such thing as a pure gift. He argued that all gifts belong to a process of exchange. They all create a sense of obligation and reciprocity. 

But a passage in Catherine of Siena’s 14th-century Dialogues startled me with its perspicuity on this point. The great Dominican doctor of the church calls Christ the Father’s gift of self, the one who erases the gap between giver and gift. 

Speaking in the voice of God, St. Catherine wrote: 

And so that you might have no excuse for not looking at my affection, I found a way to unite gift and giver. I joined the divine nature with the human. I gave you the Word, my only-begotten Son, who is one with me and I with him, and because of this union you cannot look at my gift without looking at me, the Giver.

See, then, with what affectionate love you ought to love and desire both the gift and the giver! If you do, your love will be pure and genuine and not mercenary (No. 72).

Let me put this in a way that makes sense to both believer and nonbeliever—if there is a God, then God alone can give pure gifts. Why? Because, in respect for the freedom that makes us who we are, God so willingly withdraws from human life that we are not compelled to recognize our blessings as God’s gifts. If we fail to perceive God, we register no sense of required reciprocity.

This is why St. Catherine’s insight is so spectacular. In Christ, there is no gap between giver and gift. The Father gives us the Son. The two are not the same. Yet to see the Son is to see the Father, the refulgence of the Father’s glory, at least as soon as we perceive the Son as a gift, one who emerges from beyond our world.

Grasping the gift God has given. That is the issue.

Two outsiders recognized the identity of Christ on the cross. In Mark and Matthew, it is the Roman centurion, charged with his execution. In Luke, it is one of the two criminals who, like our Lord, is condemned and crucified.

What did these men, the soldier and the sinner, see? What allowed them to perceive what others could not? What gift of God, what singular grace was at work in the scene, giving them the insight to know that this man, whom they watched die, was the very gift of God, God’s own presence, in their midst? 

Did Jesus protest less? Did he fail to flinch in response to pains we cannot even imagine? Did he continually call out to God, entrusting himself into the hands of the one whom he called Father? Did he, like my grandmother, meet cruelty with kindness? 

But how did one thief see what the other—and the crowd that had gathered—could not? Through the centuries, humankind has witnessed so many such deaths, public executions of criminals but also of saints. And no one walked away from such scenes saying that God himself had been murdered. 

Yet the man we call “the Good Thief” recognizes in Jesus of Nazareth, as St. Catherine would say, both the giver and the gift. And knowing, with the surety that faith alone can give, he sees the possibility of a reprieve, a mercy, one that no earthly realm could ever grant. He calls out:

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23:43).

Those of us raised in it will never be able to understand fully that ours is a faith directed toward the outsider, the outcast, the one who has lost all confidence in the goodness of the world, a goodness first given from the hands of God. 

But there are times—rare enough for most of us—when we are truly brought low, stripped of our normal strategies and securities. Then our faith emerges as an unexpected and undeserved gift. God’s own self steps forth from a background of so many blessings. When we ourselves are most desperately in need of mercy, we finally truly perceive the presence of a savior, one whom our confreres can neither see nor conceive.

I still feel such guilt for the way I responded to my grandmother’s gift. But guilt is itself a gift of God. We must always distinguish it from unproductive, self-loathing shame, which is the work of the evil one. 

Justly condemned for my sin, I also know the mercy of God. It was not my first sin, and so many others still follow upon it. But calling it to mind allows me to see the giver who is himself the gift, the one who strides toward me with mercy in his measure, meeting cruelty with kindness.

Condemned by earthly powers, the Good Thief perceives the Father of mercies in the suffering of the Son. Suddenly, new realms of righteousness seem possible. He calls out:

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

And he hears:

“Amen, I say to you,
today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.