Discipleship and victory

For months now we have been traveling with Jesus through the proclamation of Luke’s gospel. This festival of Christ the King is the last Sunday and culmination of the whole liturgical year. Next Sunday we begin Advent and thus begin again yet another paschal mystery journey through a liturgical year. This annual celebration reminds us that the difficulties of discipleship are always rewarded by the joy of victory. The cross leads to risen life. As we embrace the cross in our own journey of discipleship each day, we are spurred on to faithfulness by remembering that it all culminates in this victory.

Each year we begin and end the same journey. What keeps this cyclic pattern of our liturgical celebrations from becoming tedious? The answer lies in our taking the time to recognise our own growth in discipleship and our personal relationship with Jesus our King during this past year. Since judgment is one of the themes of the end times, it might be good to take some time this week to judge our own growth and preparedness to enter Paradise with Jesus. Without such self-reflection we run the risk of every liturgical year simply being like all others for us. Endings and beginnings al- ways give us an opportunity to assess growth and recom- mit ourselves to faithful dis- cipleship. True, the cross is not something we would naturally choose for ourselves. But the end of this liturgical year and the beginning of the new one when we encounter our victorious Christ is exactly what we need in order to be faithful to the disciple’s life of self-giving for the good of others.