The Marks of Spiritual Leadership - Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the final weekend of the liturgical year, which means it's time to celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. And I know every time I come to this feast, you face a certain dilemma because, you know, we don't like kings. Our country was formed in a rebellion against a king. You say, well, look, I'm not a king. I don't know anyone who's a king. And so I say, Christ is king. All right, I guess. But what does it have to do with me, right? Well, actually, if we understand this properly, it has everything to do with us. Can I ask you maybe just for a moment to bracket the explicitly political side of kingship? And think of it this way. A king is someone who orders things towards an end. Think here of like an orchestra conductor. He's got all the players and all the instruments in front of him. He's not making a sound himself, but he's ordering all these things toward the end of producing, you know, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or something.

0:57 Think of a general of an army. He doesn't himself fire a shot, but he's coordinating all of the elements of the army to achieve the great end of victory in battle. Think of the father of a family who is trying to order the charisms that are before him toward the end of the flourishing of his family. That's a king, someone that orders things towards a proper end. Now you can begin to see, well, look, a lot of us play kingly roles. That might not be king of the world, but we're king of our family. We play a kingly role often in our communities. We can play a kingly role among our friends. And here's the thing. Every one of us plays a kingly role in regard to ourselves.

1:48 Look, I'm made up of all these different energies and capacities and instincts and inclinations, and they go in different directions. Plato recognized that a long time ago. They're like horses that are going in different directions. The horses need a charioteer who's going to draw them together and lead them to a common purpose. So my soul needs a king that will direct all these energies in the right way. Now, what's the right way? Well, think about this now. Certainly everyone, listen to me, who was baptized a Catholic. As part of the ceremony, so of course water is poured over your head, but as part of the ceremony, you were chrismated on the crown of your head. Chrism oil used in the anointing of kings on the crown of your head because as baptized, you are conformed to Christ who is priest, prophet and king.

2:54 So every baptized person, listen to me, you're a king. Whether you like political kings or not, you're a king. You are conformed to Christ in his kingly identity. What's your job? Well, wherever God puts you, to order things toward the end of God's kingdom. And that means, first and foremost, you. You've got to order yourself properly. Okay, with that clarification in mind, let's look at some kings in the Bible, because the Bible is massively interested in kings. And then once we understand what kingship means for us spiritually, this can be super helpful to us. First of all, first king in the Bible, Adam. Adam is meant to be the one who cultivates the garden, listen now, who protects the garden, and then pushes the boundaries of the garden outward.

3:57 So Adam is planted in Eden by God. Now, we're using highly symbolic language here. His purpose is now to cultivate it, make it an even more beautiful place, and to keep out of it things that will interrupt its beauty and its proper functioning. And then go on the march and spread its boundaries outward. All right? Was he a good king? No. He was a failed king. And in many ways, that's the very essence of original sin. What does Adam fail to do? He fails to defend the garden against the serpent. So he allows corruption to come into this beautiful place. and thereby he's expelled from the garden. He's a failed king. Now, think about in terms of your own life. Do we sometimes fail in our cultivation of the garden, which is our own soul, and fellow sinners?

4:58 Do we fail in protecting that flourishing garden from enemies and from temptations? how often we get off the rail because we succumb, as Adam did, to petty, pathetic temptations toward wealth or power or my own ego or honors or whatever it is. And when I allow those temptations into my soul, then my soul becomes disordered. I'm a bad king, and therefore, I don't spread good order around me. In fact, I become a source of disorder for others. Ha, Adam, failed king. All right, now watch as we move through the Old Testament. Israel always searching for a true king. Look at Abraham, our father in faith, right?

5:54 The founder, really, of the people Israel. What's his great virtue? He listens to a higher voice. he hears the voice of the Lord and he obeys it even though it's calling him to a very difficult task leave your homeland leave everyone you know and go in search of this promised land Abraham listens to a higher voice than this little voice of his own ego and his own ambitions and his own projects and plans he listens to God's voice and in that measure he becomes a good king of his own life and of the lives of those around him. There's an old adage from Benjamin Franklin. I remember reading it as a little kid. And the adage is, the one who cannot obey cannot command. It's always struck me as right. And it applies here. If you can't obey, listen to the higher voice of God, you're in no position to command yourself, your family, your community, or anybody else. There's a great lesson of Abraham. How about David, the greatest king, we could say, in Israel? Does David, at his best, listen to God's voice? Yep, yeah. Read those stories again.

7:13 When David attends to God's voice, things go well. Secondly, is David a warrior? Uh-huh. Like all the kings of Israel. Moses is a kind of king, and he's a warrior. Joshua, look at all the great figures, the great kingly figures, they're all fighters.

7:34 Adam didn't fight what he should have fought. He should have resisted the devil. He didn't, though. He didn't fight him. That was his downfall. All the great kings of Israel are willing to battle. Now, don't get hung up —I'm talking about taking up violent weapons, necessarily. I just mean, are you willing to resist the evil that has to be resisted? Do you stand up to it? Do you have the valor and the courage to face down evil? Look, if you don't do it in your own life, you don't defend your own soul against evil, then you'll be a lousy king. You don't defend your community, your society, your culture, your country against evil. You're a bad king. All the great kings are fighters. Now, mind you, stay with David.

8:28 When does David become a bad king? When he stops listening to God and starts acting like God. Think here of the famous Bathsheba story, right? David now acting like God, standing up on his roof. Oh, there's this beautiful woman. I want her. Well, she's married. I don't care. David acting like God rather than listening to God. That's where kings go bad. Be attentive to that now, fellow baptized people, all called to be kings. How about David's son Solomon? Now Solomon, like a lot of the kings of Israel, does go bad in time. But in the beginning, Solomon's a very good king indeed. What does he do? Well, he builds the temple. Notice, please, first of all, the temple, that the king of Israel prioritizes right praise. See, again, listening to God's voice, that's what's paramount when it comes to proper spiritual leadership.

9:26 You don't listen to God's voice, you'll be a lousy leader. So Solomon appropriately builds a place of praise. But secondly, think about the temple simply as a building project. How involved that is, how complicated. And wood from Lebanon and workers from here and there and materiel from all over the place. and Solomon is the one who is organizing it according to this great purpose. What's his mark, by the way? What's he most famous for? Wisdom. Solomon is the archetype of wisdom. What's wisdom is this view from the hilltop, Aquinas says. Seeing life from the standpoint of the highest cause, seeing, listen now, the great pattern of things. You can't be a king, you can't be a good leader, unless you've got a vision of what things are supposed to be, unless you see everything from the standpoint of God.

10:25 Ah, there's Solomon in his wisdom. So listening to a higher voice, making the praise of God paramount, being valorous, courageous, willing to resist evil, be a warrior, be a person of wisdom, able to organize these great projects. Yeah, those are all the marks of a king. Now, who's the king of kings? Who is the one to whom all these Old Testament kings are pointing? Christ the king, whom we celebrate today. Warrior? You bet. Watch Jesus now up and down the Gospels. Not with the weapons of the world, but battling evil when it needs to be battled. Even in the face of great opposition, criticism? You bet. The cross, Jesus doing battle finally with sin and death themselves. Jesus warrior, for sure.

11:18 Jesus who listens to the higher voice. Well, I only do what I see my Father doing. My food is to do the will of my heavenly Father. Not what I will, but what you will. Attention to the higher voice. Wisdom? Well, not only is he a wise person, he's wisdom incarnate. We say he's the Logos made flesh. So in all these ways, everybody, Christ is the king of kings. He's the king for which Israel was longing from the time of Adam on. All the figures I mentioned from the Old Testament are anticipations of him. Now, bring it back home to us. So on this feast of Christ the king, we who are all kings, not in the grandest possible way, But at the very least, we're kings of our own souls. We're kings of our own lives.

12:15 What do we find? These same principles. Do you listen to a higher voice? Or is your own voice what's most important to you? Your own projects, your own plans, what I want, what I— No, no, no. He who cannot obey cannot command. You won't command your own life unless you're listening to a higher voice. is worship central to your life.

12:41 Are you a warrior? Or, like Adam, do you shrink from the fight? Do you give in to those petty temptations that are keeping you from being the person God wants you to be? Or do you stand up to them? See, kings who aren't willing to fight are, by definition, bad kings. I think very often, fellow sinners, what we do is we, like David, You know, at the beginning of that Bathsheba story, it says, the time of year when kings go on campaign, as David always did, David was home, taking a siesta on the roof of his palace. See, when David declined to fight, he becomes a bad king. Are we people of wisdom, like Solomon, like Jesus, wisdom made flesh? Do we see our lives?

13:35 Do we see reality from the standpoint of the highest cause? Take the time, everybody, today to meditate a bit upon these Old Testament kings, all of whom lead to Christ the King, who is the model for all of us baptized as priests, prophets, and kings. And God bless you.