Most Catholic and Episcopal churches have a patronal feast day and Christ Church is no exception. Our feast day is relatively new to the liturgical calendar: it was only added in 1926 and the present date was determined in 1969. This year ours falls on November 26, the last Sunday before Advent.

Two questions:

What is the name of our feast day?

A) Christ the Savior
B) Christ the Incarnation
C) Christ the Lord
D) Christ the King

The date was chosen by:

A) General Convention
B) Lambeth Conference
C) Vatican II
D) The Vestry

The answers are D and C (sort of).

Christ the King as a solemnity or holy day was instituted by Pius XI on December 11,1925 in the encyclical Quas primas in celebration of the all-embracing authority of Christ which shall lead mankind to seek the 'peace of Christ'. In the reform of the liturgical calendar following the Second Vatican Council the observance was moved to the last Sunday before Advent.

So, how did it come to be celebrated (unofficially) in the Protestant Episcopal Church? Despite some hours of internet research and digging through books in my own library, I honestly can't tell you. Christ is called king in the collect for that day, but there is no mention in either the prayer book calendar or the Lesser Feasts and Fasts our church's official recorders of holy days and observances.

I suspect that it is one more example of the Anglican reappropriation of its Catholic heritage. This reappropriation could be said to have begun with the Tractarians who reintroduced much ceremony and practice from contemporary Roman Catholicism into their 19th century church while obstensibly aiming to recover pre-Reformation elements of the English Church. In our lifetimes we have borrowed and adapted much more from post-Vatican II Catholicism, including much of the form and language of our worship and many of the more contemporary hymns.

It is nothing to be ashamed of to borrow and adapt the best of what other churches have to offer. Indeed, one is just as likely to hear a Lutheran hymn (even a Martin Luther hymn!) a Methodist hymn or Anglican hymn in a Catholic church as one is to observe a Roman Catholic practice in our own church. The similiarities among our worship services are now so great that maybe there is greater diversity within a church or denomination than there is between them.

So, let us rejoice that we are different parts of one body with one Lord and one King. And to borrow an old slogan from the Puritans: No King but Jesus!