The Feast of Christ the King 2026

Thine is the power, thine the kingdom, o Lord; Thou art above all nations. * Give peace, o Lord, in our days. ℣. God, creator of all things, fearful and mighty, just and merciful. Give peace in our time, O Lord. (The ninth responsory of the feast of Christ the King in the Benedictine Office.)

From the Great Hours of Anne of Brittany, 1503-8, illuminated by Jean Bourdichon. This image accompanies a suffrage of All Saints, and perfectly expresses Pius XI’s intention in placing the feast of Christ the King on the Sunday before All Saints’ day: Mystical Head before Mystical Body. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 9474)

℟. Tua est potentia, tuum regnum, Dómine: tu es super omnes gentes: * Da pacem, Dómine, in diébus nostris. ℣. Creátor omnium, Deus, terríbilis et fortis, justus et miséricors. Da pacem, Dómine, in diébus nostris.

By the time the feast of Christ the King was instituted in 1925, the hour of Matins was very rarely sung outside of a fairly small number of monasteries, and even then, only on major feasts, and this had been the case for quite a long time. To the degree that it was done in choir at all, it was usually done recto tono. (The common exceptions were Christmas Matins before Midnight Mass and Tenebrae.) As a result, there was little impetus to compose new responsories when new feasts were promulgated. For example, when Pope Clement XIII first granted permission for the feast of Sacred Heart to be celebrated in certain places, the Matins responsories of the Office which he promulgated for it were all borrowed from Tenebrae, Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi. Likewise, this responsory is borrowed for Christ the King from the very ancient corpus of Gregorian chants for the month of October, accompanying the readings from the books of the Maccabees, which is why a recording of it is available at all.

This year, the feast happily coincides with the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, the Gospel of which, Matthew 22,15-21 is one of Our Lord’s best known and most fundamental teachings regarding how we, his followers, are to live in the world, and what our duties to the state are.

“At that time, the Pharisees went and consulted among themselves how to ensnare Jesus in his speech. And they sent to him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, ‘Master, we know that thou art a true speaker, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou dost not regard the person of men. Tell us therefore what dost thou think, is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?’ But Jesus knowing their wickedness, said, ‘Why do you tempt me, ye hypocrites? Show me the coin of the tribute.’ And they offered him a penny. And Jesus said to them, ‘Whose image and inscription is this?’ They said to him, ‘Caesar’s.’ Then he saith to them, ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God, the things that are God’s.”

The Tribute Money, 1782 by the Anglo-American painter John Singleton Copley (1738-1815).

Pope Pius XI’s very purpose in instituting the feast of Christ the King was, of course, to respond to the ideologies of his era, which taught that man must render to Caesar that which was Caesar’s, and also render to Caesar that which is God’s. On this feast day, since we see these ideologies rising again in the world, let us remember to pray “for the liberty and exaltation of our Holy Mother the Church”, to which they pose no less of a threat now than they did a century ago.