The Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King will be observed in a celebration of Solemn High Mass and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at St. Stanislaus Church, State Street at Eld Street in New Haven, on Sunday, 31 October, at 2:00 pm. The Reverend Canon Joel Estrada, ICKSP, Pastor of St. Patrick’s Parish and Oratory, Waterbury will be the celebrant, and The Reverend Robert L. Turner, Pastor of St. Ambrose Parish, North Branford, will be the deacon.
Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King in his Encyclical Letter Quas primas of 1925. This letter explained how laïcism and secularism by organizing society without any reference to God, lead to the apostasy of the masses and the ruin of society because of their complete denial of Christ’s Kingship, which is one of the greatest heresies of our time. The Pope proposed this feast as an annual liturgical assertion of Christ’s divine right of Kingship as an effective means of combating this pernicious heresy.
By its position on the last Sunday in October, towards the end of the Liturgical Year and just before the All Saints’ Day, the feast of Christ the King comes at the climax of the celebration of all Christ’s mysteries and a kind of earthly anticipation of his everlasting reign over the elect in the glory of heaven.
Music for the liturgy sung by the Schola Cantorum of the St. Gregory Society will include the Gregorian Mass Ordinary IV, the motets “Gloria tibi” by Wm. Byrd, and “O Sacrum Convivium” by Ludovico Viadana, the Gregorian chant proper of the feast (“Dignus est agnus”), and organ music by William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons.
