Feast of Christ the King

The official materials that have been prepared for Youth Sunday here in England and Wales are coming in for some fierce criticism. Catholic and Loving it has the low down, first of all here, and then here.

Herewith is the text of a letter that I will be sending out to the leaders of the uniformed organisations (Brownies, Cubs, etc) in our parish next week. All done with the parish priest's knowledge and permission.

Feast of Christ the King 2008

15th October 2008

Dear

Celebration of Evening Prayer for the Feast of Christ the King (Youth Sunday)

I am writing to invite you and your organization to join again in a time of Eucharistic Adoration, with Evening Prayer, to celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. As you may be aware, this Feast is also marked as Youth Sunday in the Dioceses of England and Wales, and so it is quite appropriate that young people should take a lead in celebrating this day. The celebration will take place from 5 pm to 6 pm on Sunday 23rd November 2008.

My intention is that we should start the celebration with a procession (including standards) to the Altar to expose the Blessed Sacrament. We will then have a short time of Adoration, perhaps with a reading and catechesis. This will be followed by our praying the Evening Prayer of the Feast of Christ the King, as we did last year. There will be plenty to sing and to join in.

1. I suggest that the Rainbows and Beavers help to carry candles etc in the procession at the beginning and again at the end. We can arrange all of this on the day itself.

2. I suggest that the Cubs provide three readers, and the Brownies three readers, for the intercessions during Evening Prayer. (I will get the prayers to you nearer
the time.)

3. I suggest that the Scouts and Guides help lead the saying of the psalms during Evening Prayer. We can make the arrangements for this on the day itself, though I have suggested that the Guides might lead us in singing the second psalm of Evening Prayer.

I hope that these arrangements are suitable, and that you will be able to join us for this celebration. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you think we should do anything differently.

Yours sincerely

This event has been very enthusiastically supported over the last three years by the young people and their group leaders. But my posters will no doubt have to compete with the nationally produced ones on the parish noticeboard, with most people not realising the implications of the contrast.

An unfortunate aspect of the official materials is that, despite their presentation as ideas for use at Mass on the Feast of Christ the King, they are actually Liturgically un-usable. Some elements could be used for, say, a school assembly or RE lesson - the skit on the Gospel as a news headlines lends itself to this, though it might be seen as being irreverent or satirical towards the original Scriptural text and might need handling with care as a result.

Another unfortunate aspect is that I think the "livesimply" programme can be integrated into the tradition of the Church's teaching and living of poverty. This would require a much greater Christological and eschatological grounding than I have seen in the materials associated with this programme. With that integration, I believe it has the potential to become a very powerfully evangelising, and contemporary, expression of a part of the Church's spiritual heritage.