Mercy Always Has the Last Word

We come to the end of another year in the life of the Church. The calendar will turn again, as it always does, but this Sunday asks a deeper question: what kind of world are we becoming? We have watched power change hands, leaders rise and fade, nations argue, and families divide. Yet the Gospel insists there is still another kind of reign—one not measured by victory or possession, but by mercy.

Christ the King stands at the center of history—above it in majesty, within it in mercy, and beyond it in glory—reigning not through fear but through forgiveness.

From the beginning, God’s covenant has pointed toward such a reign. When the tribes of Israel came to David and said, “You shall be shepherd of my people” (2 Sam 5:2), they glimpsed what true kingship would one day mean: not domination, but care; not control, but compassion.

In the winter of 1940, German bombers reduced the English city of Coventry to ashes. Only the jagged…