This past Sunday (yesterday, as I write this) we celebrated the Feast of Christ the King, celebrating the Kingdom of Christ which will extend throughout eternity.  It's a fitting way to tie up the liturgical year, I've often felt.

As I was reading Matthew's gospel text, I found myself thinking of the Houses of Healing scene from Tolkien's Return of the King--the bit where Aragorn, King of Gondor, heals those harmed in battle:

While this is a nice little moment in the film, the book makes it pretty explicit that Aragorn's role as a healer is absolutely essential to his kingship.  One of the maidservants runs around telling everyone the old proverb: "The hands of a king are also the hands of a healer."

We get what seems like a contradictory view of Aragorn in his regal coronation:

To our very non-hierarchical, very democratic sensibilities, we might find it difficult to see these polar opposite images as reflections of one another.  What becomes even more challenging for us is that Tolkien was a Catholic (and a medievalist at that).  His depiction of Aragorn as the long-absent, returning King in fact calls us to ruminate on the nature of Christ's own kingship.

It can be a challenge for us to reconcile the image of Christ in his regal glory:

...with a Gospel reading calling us to recognize our king in the most marginalized members of society: the sick, the lonely, the prisoners.  But I think that dichotomy touches something at the heart of our Christian faith.  Christianity is a religion of paradoxes. Not least among them is that it is precisely through Christ's suffering and persecution (his death on the cross) that his glory and kingship becomes manifest. Christ our king, in all his glory, made himself a servant.  The last shall be first and the first shall be last.

If we are to live as members of Christ's kingdom, we are called to share not only Christ's glory, but also his humility.