Homily - The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ,

King of the Universe

November 17, 2024

Hello Brendan,


Here is a photo taken by the James Webb telescope. Now, where are we in this universe? We are a tiny little point in the middle of that tiny place, we are so far away that you can not even see it. What is illustrated here is that the universe is massive! There are over 200 billion galaxies in the universe, and each of those galaxies has billions of stars and trillions of planets. We are in the Milky Way galaxy and we are one planet of trillions of planets. Yikes! We are just a dot in the cosmos!


Here is my homily from the The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. Please feel free to pass it on.


God bless,


Fr. Brendan

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PS - for some awesome time of prayer and reflection, take a look at the streaming sessions of our 2024 Seeds of Contemplation Retreat.


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Follow the Leader Not Chase the Squirrel

I came to testify to the truth.


Every now and then it is good to pull back from a situation,

to get a bit of perspective.

If we are involved in a situation where we get all antsy,

it is good to pull back to get perspective.

That is what this Feast does today,

we celebrate the Feast of Christ, the King of the Universe.

And we are called to step back a little,

as we are celebrating the last Sunday of the liturgical year.

I thought we would go back using the James Webb telescope!


Here is a photo taken by the James Webb telescope

and it is a pretty amazing photo of outer space.

Now, where are we in this universe?

We are a tiny little point in the middle of that tiny place,

we are so far away that you can not even see it.

This is just one of the many brilliant photographs

that you can see using the James Webb telescope.

They are spectacularly good and eye-opening.

What is illustrated here is that the universe is massive!

There are over 200 billion galaxies in the universe,

and each of those galaxies has billions of stars

and trillions of planets.

We are in the Milky Way galaxy and

we are one planet of trillions of planets.

Yikes! We are just a dot in the cosmos!

Now that is getting perspective, right?


Why is that important?

Because the fundamental message of today

is that Christ is king of the whole universe,

not just of our little planet Earth,

but the entirety of the whole universe.

And God is the center and source of all that exists in our world.

What Christ did in this particular message we are hearing today,

is that he not only came as king of the universe,

but he came among us to show how special this planet is

and we are to the Creator.

That we are so special, that he became one of us to show us the way.


The problem is we get so distracted by so many other things,

but that is the fundamental message.

We get distracted by all sorts of things,

among them natural disasters,

which when your house is torn apart

it is sort of obvious you have gotten distracted.


But there are lots of other, let us say, manmade distractions

that we get ourselves all worked up about.

When we talk about kings and queens here on earth,

what is the first thing that comes to your mind,

armies, war and domination?

We just think immediately kings come to fight against you.

One is bigger than the next.

And they all fight for whoever is the biggest and strongest.

It is a competition.

We get distracted even with that title.


I know kings and queens and monarchies

are sort of an archaic language for us.

This whole country was set up by rebelling against that.

But then we have our own sort of kingmaking called the presidency.

Then we start doing the whole thing all over again.

It is all about competition again.

We have our own distractions.

And that is just in a political sense

but we also do it with other things.

Not just people, we do it with things.

We collect things.

We get distracted by having more things

and when the things we have are not enough,

we want still more things.


In all of this, we lose perspective

of who is at the center of our world.

We start to follow after different things.

Fundamentally, when Jesus comes among us,

he says that God is a God of love.

He loves us.

He created us by his love.

He sustains us by our love.

And in the end, it is his love that will complete us

by returning to him in source.

That we are called to follow him in the way of love.

And there is a singular commandment.

Love your God.

With all of your heart.

With all of your mind.

With all of your soul.

Love your neighbors as yourself.


That is the reduction of the whole Christian message right there.

And we are called to follow Christ in that way.

But why is that so hard for us?

Because we get so many distractions.

Some of themself made, some of them out there.

Look at the world today.

Whom do we follow?

Do we follow Christ

or are there so many other voices to follow?

So many other people, things to follow.


Even the internet itself and just social media.

Just one portion of this is we are all following.

We spend endless hours on social media;

the average hours for a teenager is four hours per day on social media.

And apparently, our age group, my age group, 50’s,

are not much better, we are 3.7 hours!

Ooh, we are way better!

Then when we talk about prayer, we come to church.

I know we get a little full in church,

but it is not like if we were following Christ.

If Jesus was truly the center of our life,

this church would be jam packed at every single mass,

every single weekend because it is the center of our life.


But we chase after different things

thinking that is what will make us happy.

This will make me happy or that will make me happy.

He will make me happy.

She will make happy or he will happy!

And so we go chasing after all sorts of things.


Let me give you an example to illustrate this.

You all know I have my dog, Bella, I love her and she loves me,

but she loves squirrels more than me.

Let’s just face it.

I mean, she sees the squirrel, boom, she is gone. Right?

But here is the thing that matters.

It is irrational for her.

It is completely instinctual.

I have trained this dog, but I cannot train that out of her.

If she sees this squirrel, she is like, and boom! 

And if there is a car on the way, it does not matter.

She does not see the car because she is going to go straight.

That is why I have to keep a hold of her.

I cannot let go of her because I know she will see that squirrel

and she will go, boom.

And if the car hits her, the car will kill her.


Now why do I say that?

Because I think we all chase after things.

We chase after people.

We chase after money.

We chase after material goods.

And we do not even realize how much we are chasing after.

We get hit by the spiritual car

and we do not know what happened.

We did not see it come. Why?

Because we are chasing like a dog chasing after a squirrel.

We, instead, we are called to follow.

Follow is a conscious, deliberate choice to follow Christ.


Do you remember when you were younger,

at least when I was younger, we used to play follow the leader.

Do you remember that game?

Follow right after the leader:

whatever they did, you did.

But it was a following.

You chose to follow the leader.

That is what we are called to do, not chase.

Not chase after stuff.

Because there is going to be lots of stuff.

People, events, latest technology, latest gadgets, latest people.

And we will keep chasing just like the squirrel.


Christ is the king of the universe.

He is the king of our hearts.

But we have to agree to that.

We have to follow and not chase other things.

And let him be king of our hearts

and let us follow him to wherever he will take us for.

He is the way, the truth and the life.

Let love one another and follow the leader.


I came to testify to the truth.

Scriptures (click here to read the scriptures)

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