On this Solemnity of Christ the King I invite you to consider what Steven Pressfield has to say about kingship in his novel GATES OF FIRE (1998). Pressfield’s fictional account tells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, a titanic clash between the freedom loving Greeks and the colossal Persian empire. In 480 BC, the Spartan king Leonidas I, leading a tiny force of 300 warriors, defended a four mile long mountainous pass on Greece’s east coast against the Persian King Xerxes I and his hundreds of thousands. Leonidas and his warriors fought to the death, holding the invading Persian horde at bay for three critical days until the Spartan was betrayed, thus allowing the Greek cities to rally and eventually achieve victory about a year later. Although mortally wounded, the novel's narrator Xeones lives long enough to tell the story of the Spartan king to the Persian court officials, indeed to the pampered, dazzlingly wealthy Xerxes himself. Xeones recounts the high standards by which any worthy nation should judge its ruler. As you read this excerpt from GATES OF FIRE, I hope you will ponder the character and integrity of Christ the King, the exemplar of all good rulers, who stood his ground for you“against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places”. [Eph 6:12] Xeones speaks: I WILL tell His Majesty what a king is. A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A KING does not command his men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A KING does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him . . . . That is a king, Your Majesty. A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.
My dear parishioners, I give you the joy of Christ our King, beseeching God to bestow on you the wealth of divine faith, hope, love and courage, now and forever. Sincerely in the hearts of Jesus and Mary. Your pastor, Reverend Richard Barker +++
On this Solemnity of Christ the King I invite you to consider what Steven Pressfield has to say about kingship in his novel GATES OF FIRE (1998). Pressfield’s fictional account tells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, a titanic clash between the freedom loving Greeks and the colossal Persian empire.