O Rex Gentium

O King of the Gentiles and the Desired of all, you are the cornerstone that binds two into one. Come, and save man whom you fashioned out of clay.

After the fall of man in the beginning, God allowed us to follow our own path and desires, and as a result we wandered in the desert, our judgment clouded. But God was determined to bring us back to himself. So, little by little, God made contact with his fallen creatures through making covenants with them. A covenant entailed a sacrifice and a sacred meal and the swearing of an oath to be faithful, and with each successive covenant, God increased his family. First was Adam and Eve, a simple covenant of marriage between one man and one woman and their children. Next was Noah through whom God enlarged his family by making it more than the nuclear family, it was an extended family. Next was Abraham through whom God enlarged the family even further by including not only blood relatives but also servants and slaves, a tribe or clan. Next was Moses through whom God enlarged his family by uniting the tribes under one law and creating a holy nation. Next was David, through whom God enlarged his family by uniting surrounding nations thus creating a kingdom, a dynasty. So it was through his covenants with mankind that God worked to undo the damage that was done at the fall and revealed a path that mankind could take which would bring us back to him. The Jews for the most part had returned to the Almighty, yet through inheriting Adam's fault (by which I mean spiritual defect), the original sin, the Jews quite often were unfaithful to the covenants they forged with God, but God was forever faithful. To rectify this, God had one final plan up his eternal sleeve.

The bible says, "in the fullness of time" when it refers to God's final and everlasting covenant. This means, when it was the right time, when the world was ready. When the world was ready, God revealed his plan for mankind, which was hinted at with each of the prior covenants. God took flesh through the Virgin Mary and became fully man while remaining fully God in the God-man, Jesus. In this way, God was able to forge a covenant with mankind yet do so in a way that God himself was the guarantor of the covenant, and since God is always faithful, Jesus, the Son of God, the God-man, would remain faithful. But the interesting thing is that it is no accident that Jesus was judged and condemned by not only by the Sanhedrin, a Jewish Court, but also by Pilate, a Gentile Judge, for as such, the blood of the sacrificial Lamb of God was on the hands of both the Jews and the Gentiles, essentially, the blood was sprinkled on representatives of all humanity. Therefore, through the new and everlasting covenant, God enlarges his family once again, but this time he unites the Jews and the Gentiles through the sacrifice of his own Son, thus swearing the oath with himself, and instituting a sacred meal, the Holy Eucharist. It is Christ who binds together the hearts of all human beings, both Jew and Gentile, and through this binding, the universal human family becomes the family of God. God's universal family is the Catholic Church of which Christ is the cornerstone.

Alleluia! You are the joy of every human heart, king of all the nations! Lord Jesus, come! Alleluia!