This Sunday is also a special day of prayer and focus upon younger Catholics (Youth Sunday). In today's children's liturgy the children talked about the jewels of God's Kingdom, love, joy, peace and hope and instead of decorating their crowns with rubies, diamonds and emeralds, they decorated them with God's gifts to us and gifts we can share with each other.
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| Children wearing their crowns for God's Kingdom with jewels of Love, Peace, Joy and Hope. |
Throughout the mass our young people helped to welcome, take up the offertory and for some it was their first time serving on the altar. More from our new altar servers in the week.
Feast of Christ the King, is also the final Sunday in the Church’s Year.
The feast of Christ the King was added to the calendar of the faith in 1922 after Pope Pius XI issued his first encyclical (which is a letter from the Pope to all the Bishops) Ubi arcano Dei consilio in December 1922.
Writing after World War I, Pius noted that while the war and fighting across Europe had stopped, there was no true peace. He spoke out against all divisions between people and said that true peace can only be found under the Kingship of Christ as "Prince of Peace".
"For Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by His teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example."
Until 1970 we celebrated this feast on the Last Sunday of October but the calendar and missal of Pope Paul VI (1970) moved it to the final Sunday of the Church’s Year (34th Sunday) and gave it that sense of Christ being the fulfilment of The Father’s plan of salvation.