You know I am a king, but my kingdom is not of this world and you know it.

Pastor’s Pen
St. Augustine Catholic Church
Sunday, November 21, 2021
Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Dear Church Family,

There are so many words that Jesus is using to answer Pilate.  Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you a King?”  Jesus answers, “You know I am a king, but my kingdom is not of this world and you know it.” The other night I watched a program on television about the Japanese trying to set up trade routes with Italy and Spain.  We wanted to tell the Japanese people about Jesus but their religion was so strong and so different.  A religion that has their main aim as God, who is a suffering God, a God who dies on a cross, is just to foreign for them and as a result, they rejected Christianity and persecuted and killed every Christian that they could find.  But His Kingdom is not of this world and it lasts forever and each of us spreads the kingdom.

I can remember when I was just first ordained and I was given the mission of being the chaplain for the Sacred Heart sisters at Sacred Heart convent in St. Charles.  Every day I would have mass and then they would do a nice thing for me—they would give me a little breakfast afterwards.  I would sit in this room and right to my left was a little closet.  It was there that St. Rose Philippine Duchesne lived in St. Charles.  I was right next to her and didn’t make much out of it at the time, but Thursday was the Feast of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, who was a saintly woman who wanted to give her life and work to the Native American people of Kansas, which she did.  She gave her all and lived simply but she knew that her kingdom was not of this world, either.

It is good for us to take notice that we have a person here who was considered by the church as a saint in 1988.  So, it’s rubbing off on me all the time now that just as Rose Philippine Duchesne gave recognition of this kingly person, and we are being kingly persons when we give recognition and give our lives in service and love when we are living ‘thy kingdom come’ right now on earth as certainly ‘as it is in heaven’.  It is so mystic!  I just thought to myself, “Wow, I was right next to and had breakfast five days a week, right next to the little place where Rose Philippine Duchesne lived, which is now a shrine because, in her very simple way, she was spreading the kingdom and that is the kingdom not of this world as Jesus proclaims in the Gospel today.  So celebrate your spreading the kingdom and again I am so privileged to have this religious sign right around me to remind me of the privilege of having had breakfast every morning right next to St. Rose Philippine Duchesne. Alleluia!

Love,
Father Bob