We celebrate the final Sunday of our liturgical year with the proclamation of Jesus as King (John 18:33-37). Today’s Gospel enables us to understand the person of Jesus and the way He exercises His royal authority over us. We witness Jesus’ Kingship by His showing us the way in which one lives a royal life not by consolidating worldly power and earthly privilege but rather in loving obedience to fulfilling the Father’s Will.

Throughout the Gospel of Mark read this most recent liturgical year, we heard Jesus instructing His followers to abandon all ideas of God’s Messiah acting as a powerful political figure valiantly galloping into Jerusalem brandishing a shiny sword to sack the Roman occupiers. On the contrary, we learned that as the Messiah will offer His life for the salvation of the world. More so, Jesus’ generous loving self-offering for us and for our salvation is rewarded by the defining act of God of raising Him from the dead.

Jesus is not a King who rules from a royal throne is some earthly palace. He is a King who is lifted up on Cross and draws all people to Himself. His kingly exercise reveals just how much He loves us and desires to rescue us from the captivity of sin and death. As Universal King, conquering the world but not of the world, Jesus perfectly displays the most universal of human experiences – the experience of love.