Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King. It was created by Pope Pius XI, Achille Ratti, in 1925 and to understand the feast you will need to know the Man. Let me tell you a story about him that occurred earlier that year.

The dust had settled from the First World War and revealed a changed world, every institution including the church was uncertain how to proceed, indeed, how to connect with people. Since the 1890s the Popes had realized that the rise of industrialism and the form of capitalism that supported it as well as the socialism and communism that opposed it had created unprecedented problems for a church that depended upon monarchial government and agricultural production. Pope Leo 13th in 1891 recognized the need for a just wage and the right of working people to organize to provide for a dignified and productive life. He sought to bring the church to accept this new reality and to embrace clerks, merchants and most importantly factory workers.

His call was not heeded by most bishops in the world and indeed was at some times and places actively resisted. The split widened between working people and the Church. One exception to this not very benign neglect was a young Belgian Priest, Joeph Cardijn. He not only saw the need to minister to young workers but to minister with them. He formed groups which eventually became the Young Christian Workers not only for catechetical instruction and prayer but for education and social action. He believed that they should control their own funds and decide on their own projects and causes. The motto of the group, which was taken up by Pope St John 23rd in the Second Vatican Council and Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti was “See, Judge Act.”

We are in the final part of the gospel of Mark. Mark spends the last third of his gospel giving us almost a day to day detail of Jesus’s last week what we refer to as Holy Week, and the section today is from the Tuesday of that week.

Jesus has been at the temple and engages in dialog and in dispute with the leaders, but he has also used it as an opportunity to teach, as you might recall from last week, when he points out the widow who puts in her last two coins.

As it proceeds, Jesus is aware of what will be coming. And he knows that the expectations of the people will get disappointed because they were anticipating with his glorious entry into Jerusalem. They were anticipating that this would be the end of the Roman Empire at the end of the Roman control over their territory and that as the Messiah, he would be ushering in then the great revival of the Nation of Israel.

In today’s Gospel we discover that Jesus had sharp hearing but to understand how we know this we must understand where he was standing.  

Jesus is in the temple area. It was a series of courtyards. The first and largest was the courtyard of the gentiles. This did not mean that only gentiles could use it but that everyone including gentiles could. The next was the court of the women which again was not just for women but for all Jews. The spaces narrowed further with a court for just Jewish men, then priests and finally the Holy of Holys which only the High Preist could enter once a year at Yom Kippur. The temple was huge and tremendously expensive to maintain. One revenue source was donations from visitors. The temple authorities were very shrewd. First, as they used coins, they made the collection boxes from metal. More and larger coins made more noise and caused more attention to be paid to the donor. They were in fact called the trumpets. Also, there were twelve of them, each one for a different purpose, from care of the gold of the temple to doweries for the daughters of poor priestly families. A person could donate to several of them, and everyone would hear their generosity.  Truly getting a bang for their buck. And most importantly they were placed in the court of the women so women could donate as well. 

This is where Jesus has placed himself. He sees the rich come forward and hears the conspicuous noise they made putting their large coins perhaps in several trumpets. They were aware of who they were and expected everyone to notice and admire.