Behold Your King: Dr Alan Fimister’s New Course on the Teaching and Feast of Christ the King
By The Family and Life Academy | 29 January 2025
“Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ…
“The gospels present this kingdom as one which men prepare to enter by penance, and cannot actually enter except by faith and by baptism, which, though an external rite, signifies and produces an interior regeneration.”
— Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas (11 December 1925) 1 & 15.
2025 is not only a Jubilee Year. It also marks the 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea and the centenary of Quas Primas, the encyclical in which Pius XI gave us a golden teaching concerning the social reign of Christ and instituted the liturgical feast of Christ the King. In commemoration of these events, and to explore their significance in our own times, the Family and Life Academy, in collaboration with the Dialogos Institute and Restore Tradition, is pleased to announce the launch of a new course this spring, Behold Your King by Dr Alan Fimister.
Enrolment is now open for $79 (approximately £64). The course will consist of seven ninety-minute lessons, beginning on Monday in Quinquagesima, 3 March 2025 at 12pm EST (5pm GMT). Running throughout Lent, the course will investigate the profound connection between the divine Sonship of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His prerogatives over human society, closely following the text of Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas.
The course will delve into the foundations of Catholic Social Teaching concerning the Kingship of Christ in Holy Scripture and in the writings of Church Fathers, such as St Leo the Great and St Thomas Aquinas: the authorities of Scripture and Tradition uniting to form a great monument to the rights of God over His creatures, for His glory and for our happiness and salvation on earth and in heaven. Dr Fimister will also examine how the teaching of Pius XI’s encyclical was the development of the teaching already implicit in the encyclicals of his predecessor Leo XIII, and developed further by his successor Pius XII.
The course will also explore the practical considerations of what the Kingship of Christ would look like, not only spiritually in the hearts of the faithful but socially and politically, from its beginnings in devotions such as the consecration of families — the organic cells both of civil society and of the Mystical Body — to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to its divine final end of bringing about true peace between peoples and nations, unattainable by human means since, as our Lord says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36).
Dr Alan Fimister, who is Assistant Professor of Dogmatic Theology at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Connecticut and Director of the Dialogos Institute, previously led the Family and Life Academy course, Parents as Primary Educators, following the text of Pius XI’s 1929 encyclical on Christian education, Divini illius magistri. The five-part course provides a thorough understanding of this landmark encyclical, which is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the principles of authentic Catholic pedagogy, needed so desperately to address the crisis in education today. Complimentary access to this course is now available on the Family and Life Academy website.
Behold Your King will not only form a follow-up to this course by exploring the prerogatives of Jesus Christ — as Redeemer, Law-giver and Judge — over the three societies delineated by Pius XI in Divini illius magistri — the family, the Church and the state. The course will also form a Lenten retreat, preparing us to celebrate the victory of the Cross this Easter, and on the feast of Christ the King later in the year, by a profound study and contemplation of the work of Redemption at its fullest extent in the temporal sphere. As Pius XII writes in Quas Primas:
“When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen’s duty of obedience. It is for this reason that St Paul, while bidding wives revere Christ in their husbands, and slaves respect Christ in their masters, warns them to give obedience to them not as men, but as the vicegerents of Christ; for it is not meet that men redeemed by Christ should serve their fellow-men. ‘You are bought with a price; be not made the bond-slaves of men.’” (Ibid, 19).
As Dr Alan Fimister recounts in greater detail in a recent article commemorating the 1,700th anniversary of the Battle of Chrysopolis, in which Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman Emperor, defeated his last remaining Pagan rival, Licinius, and became the undisputed master of the Roman world, the historian Eusebius of Caesarea writes that the pagans were put in such dread by the Labarum — the standard of the Cross borne by Constantine’s armies — that they were instructed never to attack it or even look at it directly.
Proving himself worthy to be the instrument of the dawning of God’s light and truth upon a world of darkness and error, one of Constantine’s first acts as sole Emperor was to summon the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, which condemned the heresies of Arius the presbyter, who denied the true divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is this divinity and the triumphant victory of the Cross which is recognised and acknowledged in the feast of Christ the King.
Our Lord Himself assures us, “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33). In the midst of the tribulations of this present age, of heresy and of depravity, join us in lifting high the Cross for all to see: our only hope and the infallible pledge of heavenly victory.
Enrolment for Dr Alan Fimister’s course, Behold Your King is now open at the Family and Life Academy. Enrolment is $79 (approximately £64) and includes access to the live lessons from Monday 3 March at 12pm EST (5pm GMT) and permanent access to the videos thereafter.