Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today is the last Sunday before the end of the Church Year – Christ the King which reminds every one of us that Christ is Lord.
In this year’s readings, we see how Jesus Christ revealed himself as our Lord on the cross. The words written above his head in three languages, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, seem to proclaim to all that he is King of the world.
People might wonder why a king was not sitting on a glorious throne, but rather was crucified on a cross.
We need first understand the richness of Jesus’ life before we can fathom the meaning of his Lordship.
After his resurrection, he built a community. Yet this community is not an earthly kingdom but rather a church that seeks to change people’s hearts and set their lives on a firm foundation. The Church is dedicated from beginning to end to following in Jesus’ footsteps without using violence, domination, and conflict to build up her power, but rather through sacrifice, forgiveness and tolerance to win peoples’ hearts and recover the humanity that God bestowed upon us at creation.
In the past six months, we believe that many of our brothers and sisters have been praying to Jesus Christ to grant us justice, and to resolve conflicts, violence and division, allowing Hong Kong to restore order, stability, peace and prosperity, and at the same time develop and strengthen democracy, human rights, liberty and the rule of law. When we cannot see a way forward, and when the situation deteriorates, we tend to seek shortcuts to reach our goals. And so we make use of force, vigilante justice, threats, violence, and domination to resolve problems, resulting in more chaos and conflict. But the above-mentioned methods cannot recover kindness, because they trap us in a vicious cycle of sin, turning Hong Kong into a land of hatred, bitterness and piteous cries.
Today as we celebrate the Sunday before Advent, let us remind ourselves once again that Hong Kong needs the might manifested in our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to replace hatred with love, condemnation with forgiveness and reconciliation, and sincerely seek to understand and face the truth with honesty instead of lies. Although we may feel that this is infeasible in this city, or that it is unrealistic, this is how Jesus Christ built his kingdom on earth. We can begin with ourselves by bringing peace, justice, mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation into our daily lives.
Although we will remain in a difficult situation in the immediate future, we should remember that besides being citizens of earth, we are also citizens of heaven. As citizens of heaven, our ultimate calling is to bring heaven to earth. Only in this way may we attain true prosperity, peace, democracy and freedom for Hong Kong.
May the Lord bless you all.
+Archbishop Paul Kwong +Bishop Andrew Chan +Bishop Timothy Kwok
24 November 2019