Israël es tu Rex,
davidis et inclyta proles;
nomine qui in Domini,
Rex benedicte, venis.

Theodulph of Orléans,
Hymn Gloria laus et honor.

Gloria, laus et honor tibi sit, Rex Christe Redemptor. As ancient hymn rings out, sung on Palm Sunday before the locked doors of the church, the procession of clergy and faithful solemnly enters the new Jerusalem, throwing open its sturdy doors with the triple blow of the processional Cross. The evocative ceremony of the Second Sunday of Passiontide recalls the triumphal entry of Our Lord into the Holy City, prefigured by that of Solomon (1 Kings 1:32-40). It therefore has an eminently regal nature, because with this taking possession of the Temple, He is recognized and praised as God, as the Messiah, and as the King of the Jews: Christ, Χριστός, the Anointed of the Lord. His Divine Kingship had already been witnessed and honored by the Magi in the cave of Bethlehem: with gold for the King of Kings, incense for the Living and True God, myrrh for the Priest and Victim.

A little less than a hundred years ago, on December 11, 1925, the Lombard Pontiff Pius XI promulgated the immortal Encyclical Quas Primas, which defined the doctrine of the Universal Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ: He is King because He is God, and also because He is a descendant of the royal lineage of the tribe of David, and finally He is King by right of conquest through the Redemption.

The institution of this feast did not, in truth, introduce anything new. It was established by Pius XI to counter and combat the plague of secular liberalism, the Masonic Free Church in a Free State, and the foolish presumption of excluding Jesus Christ from civil society. Pius XI was not the only one to solemnly reaffirm Catholic doctrine: before him, Clement XII, Benedict XIV, Clement XIII, Pius VI, Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XIV, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Saint Pius X had severely condemned secret lodges, Carbonari, Freemasonry, and all the errors that the enemies of Christ had spread and fueled over the last two centuries. After the great fracture of Protestantism in the sixteenth century, the following three centuries saw the Catholic Church and the Anti-Church, that is, Freemasonry, clash in a series of terrible battles: on one side, the Prince of Peace and His angelic and earthly hosts; on the other, the scelesta turba – the evil crowd, the wretched mob, incited by merchants enslaved to Lucifer. The myth of the “sovereign people” buried centuries of Christian civilization under the ruins of the Revolution, demonstrating the extent of the aberrations to which man could go. The martyrs of these centuries of unspeakable violence and still unpunished massacres look down on us from their seats in heaven, demanding justice for the blood that was shed. And with their silence—almost a dark night for the Church, on the eve of her passion—they watch in disbelief as the popes of these last decades have laid down their spiritual weapons and cooperated with the enemies of Christ. From those seats, the warrior Pontiffs also look down on us, they who—even at the cost of their own lives, like Pius VI, imprisoned by Napoleon and dying of the hardships of prison—faced head-on the most ferocious attacks against God, against the Papacy, against the Catholic Hierarchy, and against the faithful. If history had not been falsified by the temporary victors of this war – as still happens today – our children would be studying in schools not the storming of the Bastille, not the lies of the epic of the Risorgimento, not the deeds of conspiring mercenaries or corrupt ministers, but the phases of the genocide against the Catholics of once-Christian nations.

When the feast of Christ the King was established, the Catholic Church could no longer avail Herself of the cooperation of Catholic sovereigns, who had once enforced the principles of the Gospel and natural law in civil and penal laws. The first authority of the ancien régime to fall was, in fact, the monarchy of divine right, which draws its vicarious power in temporal affairs from the Kingship of Christ. The second authority fell a few decades later, that of the pontiffs subservient to the Revolution. With the deposition of the papal tiara, Paul VI sealed the abdication of Christ’s power in spiritual matters and the surrender to the anti-Christian and anti-Catholic ideologies of the Synagogue of Satan. “We too, more than any other, have the cult of man,” [1] said Montini at the closing of Vatican II. And under the vaults of the Vatican Basilica these words echoed: “The Church has almost declared itself the handmaid of humanity,” words which only a few years earlier would have scandalized any Catholic. Paul VI—and with him his predecessor, John XXIII—initiated the process of liquidating the Church of Christ, and they bear the responsibility for have disarmed the Citadel and thrown open its doors to better admit the enemy, only to later hypocritically denounce that “through some crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.” [2] And nothing was spared from that disarming operation: neither doctrine, nor morality, nor liturgy, nor discipline. Thus, even the Feast of Christ the King was disfigured, its date moved to the end of the liturgical year, taking on an eschatological significance: Christ the King of the world to come, but not of earthly societies. Because the Lordship of the Incarnate Word supposedly represented an obstacle to dialogue with “contemporary man” and the idol of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The proponents of this suicidal dismantling had reason to rejoice that an end had finally been made of the post-Tridentine triumphalism of a Church that wanted to convert the world to Christ, and not adapt Divine Revelation to the anti-gospel of the anti-church; of a Church that honored its Lord as Universal King and wanted to lead all souls to Him, so that in the regnum Christi they could live in the pax Christi.

Scelesta turba clamitat: regnare Christum nolumus [3] – let us sing the magnificent hymn of today’s feast – The wicked crowd shouts: We do not want Christ to reign! This blasphemy is the battle cry of Lucifer’s hordes, the sons of darkness; the same cry that resounded when the rebellious and proud spirit of Satan vomited his Non serviam. A cry that subverts the divine κόσμος, founded in Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the God who became Incarnate out of obedience to the Eternal Father, and who in obedience died on the Cross propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem.

In the end times, now imminent, the Antichrist will challenge Christ for His Universal Lordship, seeking to seduce the people with wonders and false miracles, even faking his own resurrection. Fascinating, seductive, deceitful, proud, and self-righteous, the Antichrist will fight the Holy Church relentlessly, persecuting her ministers and faithful, adulterating her doctrine, and corrupting her clergy, turning them into his own servants. What we have seen unfold in the civil and religious spheres for at least two centuries in a continuous crescendo, is the preparation of this infernal plan, aimed at deposing Our Lord, rejecting Him as God, King, and High Priest, and impiously trampling on the Incarnation and the work of Redemption.

With the Feast of Christ the King, we cooperate in the restoration of order, of the divine κόσμος against the infernal χαός. We restore to Christ the crown that already belongs to Him, the scepter that the Revolution took from Him. Not because it is up to us to make the restoration of order possible—an order of which Our Lord will be the sole architect—but because it is not possible to participate in this restoration without our own contribution.

At the time of the Savior’s first coming, the kingdom of Israel and the temple had neither a legitimate King nor legitimate High Priests: civil and religious authority was held by figures appointed by the emperor. In the Second Coming at the end of the world, this vacancy of authority will be even more evident, because Our Lord will restore all things in Himself—Instaurare omnia in Christo (Eph 1:10)—at a historical moment when Evil will dominate in all areas of daily life, in all institutions, in all societies. And His Triumph will be a triumphant, crushing, total, inexorable victory over all the lies and crimes of the Antichrist and the Synagogue of Satan.

Let us make our own the prayer of the hymn Te sæculorum Principem:

O Christe, Princeps Pacifer,
Mentes rebelles subjice:
Tuoque amore devios,
Ovile in unum congrega.

O Christ, Prince who brings true Peace, subdue rebellious minds: and gather into one fold all who have distanced themselves from Your love. And so may it be.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

26 October MMXXV
D.N.J.C. Regis
Dominica  XX post Pent., ultima Octobris

NOTES

1 – Cf. Discourse of Paul VI at the IX Public Session of the Second Vatican Council, 7 December 1965.

2 – Homily of Paul VI, Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, 29 June 1972.

3 – Hymn Te sæculorum Principem for the Feast of Christ the King.