Pro-life Preaching Hints

November 22 - Solemnity of Christ the King

Dn 7:13-14
Rv 1:5-8
Jn 18:33b-37

Two ways of approaching the theme of the sanctity of life on the Feast of Christ the King are to approach it in the light of Christ’s dominion over human life, and in the light of his victory over sin and death.

Christ’s Kingship is all about his dominion. All of today’s readings reflect that. The ultimate question in the debate over abortion and euthanasia is a debate about dominion. It’s not so much a question of when human life begins or ends, but a question of to whom it belongs. The only answer in the light of the Word of God and the Kingship of Christ is that human life belongs to God – not only because he made it, but because he redeemed it in Christ. Dr. James McMahon was an abortionist in Southern California and performed partial-birth abortions. When asked by the American Medical Association news how he justified doing it, he admitted that the baby was a child, but then said there was a more important question, “Who owns the child? It’s got to be the mother,” he explained. This idea that some people own others, though rejected long ago in the slavery debate, resurfaces in the abortion debate, and flatly contradicts the Kingship of Christ and the dominion he exercises over human life.

He is King also because he has conquered the power of evil. The Alpha and the Omega lives and reigns before all other life came to be, and after all death will be destroyed. He holds the keys of death and has robbed it of its power. In the light of that victory, we who work to build the Culture of Life are really proclaiming a Kingdom that has already been established in place of the kingdom of death. That vanquished kingdom still echoes through the land – through evils like abortion – but no longer has the final word. Our culture can be delivered from its power because Christ has already accomplished that delivery – we simply have to announce and apply it, through the many facets of the ministry of the Church and the pro-life movement.

This Kingship over evil manifests itself in us when, despite powerful temptations (such as those that afflict a person tempted to abort a child), we can and do choose what is right and good – we always have the power to choose life, no matter what the circumstances.

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