For this marvelous feast of Christ the King, always celebrated on the last Sunday of the liturgical year, the Church gives us a reading from the thirty-fourth chapter of the prophet Ezekiel. We recall that Ezekiel was a temple priest who was carried off in the first wave of the Babylonian captivity, around the year 600 BC. He was witness to a catastrophe of monumental proportions. He certainly recognized how this was the result of foreign invasion, but he also sees how it was the result of folly and corruption on the part of Israel’s leaders, its shepherds. So what will God do? He will come himself to shepherd his people. It is impossible to understand the New Testament apart from this prophecy.
Mass Readings
Reading 1 – Ezekiel 34:11-17
Psalm – Psalm 23:1-6
Reading 2 – 1 Corinthians 15:20-28
Gospel – Matthew 25:31-46
