O Rex Gentium

“King of all peoples and cornerstone of the Church, come and save humanity, which you made from the dust of the earth.” A monarch literally “rules alone.” The solitary potentate unites those under him by their common allegiance to him, their common reliance on him. The Israelite monarchy, first under Saul and then under David and after him Solomon, drew the disparate twelve tribes into one nation. Our Lord Jesus Christ is King of the Universe because when he sits on his throne “all the nations will be gathered before him.” [Matthew 25.32]

Isaiah [19.13] describes the tribal chieftains of Egypt as cornerstones; this analogy of a human leader who holds people together to the architectural function of the cornerstone to provide cohesion and stability to a building leads the prophet to declare that in Jerusalem the Lord himself will establish a new ruler, the cornerstone of a new building, who will rule with justice and integrity. [28.16-17] For the New Testament writers this new building is the Church, formed of dissimilar and incongruent stones (“congruent” geometric figures are those that coincide exactly when superimposed) whose variety is itself testimony to the bountiful beneficence of the Spirit of God. [I Corinthians 12.4,18-19] Like fragile human beings,
[Genesis 3.19; cf Isaiah 40.6] stones can crumble and edifices built of them can fall. [Mark 13.2] The promise of God is that with Christ as cornerstone the Church will cohere and endure. [Ephesians 2.20-22; Apocalypse 3.11-12] Christ the Desire of all nations [Haggai 2.7] will draw all the world’s peoples into one Holy Temple, filled with the glory of God.