The Catholic liturgy proclaims the kingship of Christ on every page. The Psalms repeatedly announce this kingship.
God promises His Son authority over rulers and nations. This is seen particularly in the second Psalm, and Bossuet invoked this Psalm when he reminded Louis XIV of this kingship of Christ, which shatters unjust and guilty kings.
The season of Advent, which summarizes the entire Old Testament and recalls the expectation of the patriarchs, always shows us the King, the King par excellence, as the object of our desires and prayers. "The King is coming, let us adore Him," is our daily cry during Advent.
At Christmas, it is the child-king that the Church presents to us. Such is the first word of the Christmas office, the one that opens the First Vespers of the feast:
"Behold the King of peace, whom the whole earth desires..., who is exalted above all the rulers of the earth."
But the true feast of Christ's kingship is the Epiphany. On that day, the Church names the Savior:
"the Great King."
The kings of the East come, in the name of all nations, to adore this Great King. They lay their crowns at His feet, they offer Him tribute and acknowledge Him as their sovereign. The kingship of Christ is affirmed as equal to His divinity and His priesthood. On this feast, the Church has us read a homily by Saint Gregory, where he qualifies as heretics those who deny the kingship of Christ, as well as those who deny His divinity.
This feast is therefore, throughout the Church, the glorification of Christ's kingship. But in Rome, for half a century, and thanks to the initiative of a servant of God, this homage to the Great King takes on an entirely exceptional solemnity and universality.
It was around 1840 that the venerable Vincent Pallotti – founder of the Missionaries called, after his name, Pallottins – conceived the idea of reproducing annually in Rome the homage that the nations had offered to Christ in Bethlehem.
With the permission of the Holy Father, he convened for a solemn octave, at the great church of Sant'Andrea della Valle, groups of the various nationalities represented in Rome. The celebrations included a solemn daily Mass, according to one or another of the various rites admitted by the Church, and notably Eastern rites, then sermons in the various languages of Europe, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament given by someone from the national seminaries. The idea was a happy one. It surely came from God. The success surpassed all hopes. The holy priest took it upon himself to find benefactors to ensure, through endowments, the annual return of this social homage to the Great King.
Thanks be to God, this solemn homage is still rendered to Christ each year. While so many pious customs, so many delightful feasts have disappeared in Rome, the octave founded by the venerable Vincent Pallotti still enjoys the same success. There is hardly a more popular feast in Rome. The great church of Sant'Andrea della Valle is always too small to contain the crowd during the fine days of the octave.
The Mass is celebrated in the rites of the East: Greek, Slavic, Syriac, Melkite, Armenian, Chaldean, Maronite. One hears successively the gently cadenced Greek melodies, the simple and gravely religious chants of the Armenians and the other Asian rites.
From the pulpit of the church of Sant'Andrea, the word of God is heard during these eight days in Italian, French, English, Spanish, Slavic, and German. There is always in Rome some bishop and some eminent priest of these nationalities, who lives in the city or is passing through, and who lends himself to this solemn mission.
Each evening of the octave, the clerics of the foreign seminaries take part in the functions of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. One sees successively those from Germany, the United States, Canada, France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Bohemia, Poland, Belgium, and South America.
The Eastern rites especially give a great attraction to these feasts and vividly recall the Magi from the East. The representatives of these rites are becoming more numerous in Rome day by day. The Greeks, Armenians, and Maronites have seminaries there. Could this be the presage of the return of the East to the true Church? It is permissible to hope so.
The Catholic Church already counts about ten million faithful children who follow the Eastern rites. The seminaries of Rome will provide apostles for the great work of union. The ruins of the glorious churches of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria will rise again. Russia itself will one day be shaken. The prayers that are made for its return to unity will soon, no doubt, see the beginning of their realization. It is then that the great and noble idea of the venerable Pallotti will receive its full extension. All the nations of the East and the West will present their homage to the child-king of the Epiphany.
But for this, the Sacred Heart of Jesus must be preached to the East. The restoration of union will be the fruit of this devotion, all of peace and charity.
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The missionaries of the East will draw from Rome the sacred fire of this dear devotion, and the ardor of their zeal will bring the dissident nations back to the Church. The marvelous star led the Magi of the East to the feet of the Great King; the resplendent sun of the Heart of Jesus will bring back the peoples of those same regions.
Source: Le Règne du Cœur de Jésus – Léon Dehon – 1892