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| Image source: Uncertain. Depiction of the 'New, Heavenly Jerusalem' |
Applying Scripture and the insights of Ratzinger, Aquinas and John of the Cross, this article aims at painting the Catholic picture of 'the Kingdom,' theologically and in our practical spirituality.
The Kingdom of God… What exactly is it? Words
so often jostled about, invoked in our praying of the ‘Lord’s Prayer,’ and mentioned
countless times by Christ in the Gospels. Yet there’s something strangely
enigmatic about this phrase. If we were put on the spot we might struggle to define
and describe what it is.
To some Catholics “the Kingdom” is likely viewed as a boring
subject evangelicals harp on about; the utopian goal of liberation theologians,
stripped of the transcendental; or an archaic symbol for ecclesiastic triumphalists.
Putting aside various conceptions about what the Kingdom of God is, Jesus makes
it clear that it is important, vital to everything we are as Christians. As
Catholics, although we can learn much from our Protestant brothers and sisters
who frequently employ ‘Kingdom language,’ we are blessed with access to a
deeper understanding of what the Kingdom is; since we abide in full and visible
communion with the successor of Peter to whom Christ has entrusted “the keys of
the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 16:19).[1] We
are thus privileged with being objectively closer to the source of Revelation, visible
in Christ and entrusted to His Church.
What is the Kingdom?
A general inability to define what the Kingdom of God or
the Kingdom of Heaven is, is partly understandable, because the Kingdom of God
transcends description. This is what makes the Kingdom a mystery in the sacred
sense of the term—capable of being understood, but more than we can ever
understand. It is thus that Jesus, catering to our human intelligence and
experience, employs various allegories and metaphors to explain what the
Kingdom is: like a treasure buried in a field; like a pearl of great price;
like a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, but which eventually grows into the
largest of shrubs wherein the birds of the air can nest; or like “yeast in three
measures of flour,” causing the dough to rise, or “like a net which was thrown
into the sea and gathered fish of every kind” etc. (Mt 13:44; 45-46; 31; 33; 47).
Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in Jesus of
Nazareth (2007) devotes a whole chapter to exploring the varying theologies
surrounding the Kingdom of God. He summarises three main approaches: (1) a Christological
view, that sees Jesus as the personification of the Kingdom of God— “it is not
a geographical dominion… It is a person,” Jesus Christ. (2) A mystical or
idealistic view, that sees the Kingdom as the reign of God’s grace within the
interiority of the soul; and (3) an ecclesiastic view, where by the Church is “regarded
as the actual presence of the Kingdom within history.”[2]
The latter view, among others, is espoused in Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium (3):
“The Church, or, in other words, the kingdom of Christ now present in mystery,
grows visibly through the power of God in the world.”[3]
Ratzinger goes on to propose the necessity of all these views: the Kingdom of
God is in Christ, in the Church, and in the soul of believers, but it is only “from
this centre [Jesus Christ] that the different, seemingly contradictory aspects
can be joined together”.[4]
This synchronistic or wholistic approach to the Kingdom of God is the genuine Catholic
(etymologically from the Greek: kata "about," holos,
"whole") approach: deeply Christocentric, ecclesiological, and
spiritual; and we might add, necessarily, deeply Trinitarian and even
Mariological. Still, because there is so much to this “Kingdom” it is worth
starting off with a baseline ‘definition’.
A Basic Definition: God’s Active Reign
In arriving at a definition of God’s Kingdom it is worth
starting with a definition of kingdom itself: a geographical and political realm
that is ruled by a monarchical ruler—a king or queen. An earthly kingdom is “present”
wherever the king or queen rules. As Ratzinger, quoting Stuhlmacher points out:
The Hebrew word for kingdom, malkut, “is a nomen actionis
[an action word] and means—as does the Greek word basileia [kingdom]—the
regal function, the active lordship of the king”.[5] The
Kingdom of God then is God’s active reign—the eternal and spiritual reality of
God’s Lordship. Wherever God is present, the Kingdom of God is there.[6]
Yet it’s not as simple as this. We know God is
omnipresent, yet the world is hardly a perfect manifestation of God’s Kingdom. How
do we explain this? Then there is the consideration that even without us and
all creation God would still be sovereign, not literally sovereign, for without creation there would be nothing for God to be sovereign over, but eternally sovereign: God and His Power always was, is and will be. Without creation the Lord would still be Lord within
Himself—not as a literal "Lord" who is master over something (since without creation there would be nothing to 'lord over'), but He is Lord analogously as the One who Is, the "I Am," YHWH. Thus the Kingdom of God does not seem wholly contingent on the existence of
creation. There is at least something essential to "the Kingdom" that pertains to
God’s absolute and self-sufficient "reign" outside the economy of salvation. (Keeping in mind that all such language appropriated to the Trinity is analogous). It is useful then to point out a
twofold dimension of God’s Kingdom: ad intra, the co-equal reign of God’s
Triune Self within Himself; and ad extra, the reign of God’s Self ‘outside’
of Himself, in creation—in all that exists.
The Kingdom Ad Intra
God eternally reigns within Himself, as a Three-Personed
God—the Father reigning in the Son as Father, as supreme and only Father; the Son reigning in the Father as
Son, as supreme and only Son; and Both by the mutuality of the Holy Spirit, who constitutes and is, as
Divine Person, Their very Reign—a Reign of Love. It is not a Reign of superiors
and inferiors, for each Divine Person is God, their Reign of Love is Co-Equal.
The Kingdom in this Trinitarian sense, ad intra (within themselves), is analogously a kingdom, it is not a kingdom how we know it: where one party rules another party. This Kingdom, this 'Beyond Kingdom,' if you will, precedes creation and transcends the Church. “Before Abraham was,” the Kingdom was, before “the beginning” there was the Kingdom and it was Goodness Itself. The Kingdom simply “is”.
In the highest and deepest sense the Kingdom is God Himself, Pure Act Itself, the ‘abode’ or ‘locus’ of “pure act, without the admixture of any potentiality” (Aquinas, Summa I Q.9.i.co.). Nothing is in need of doing ‘here,’ nothing awaits fulfillment, nothing wants, or lacks, nothing can be better or improved in this Kingdom, all is complete, perfect, unchangeable but not stagnate, superabundantly alive, beyond anything conceivable—such is the Kingdom of God ad intra, within Himself. A Kingdom enjoyed and ‘populated,’ to use terribly inadequate human terms, by population one-in-three: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Kingdom in this Trinitarian sense, ad intra (within themselves), is analogously a kingdom, it is not a kingdom how we know it: where one party rules another party. This Kingdom, this 'Beyond Kingdom,' if you will, precedes creation and transcends the Church. “Before Abraham was,” the Kingdom was, before “the beginning” there was the Kingdom and it was Goodness Itself. The Kingdom simply “is”.
In the highest and deepest sense the Kingdom is God Himself, Pure Act Itself, the ‘abode’ or ‘locus’ of “pure act, without the admixture of any potentiality” (Aquinas, Summa I Q.9.i.co.). Nothing is in need of doing ‘here,’ nothing awaits fulfillment, nothing wants, or lacks, nothing can be better or improved in this Kingdom, all is complete, perfect, unchangeable but not stagnate, superabundantly alive, beyond anything conceivable—such is the Kingdom of God ad intra, within Himself. A Kingdom enjoyed and ‘populated,’ to use terribly inadequate human terms, by population one-in-three: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Kingdom Ad Extra
Yet we know God has become a Creator—He created the heaven and
the earth. More than this, God has entered into covenant with humanity, above all, in Jesus Christ. Thus secondly, the Kingdom of God pertains not only to God's Self in His Self-Sufficiency, but to the divine economy: to the dynamic of God with us, and us with Him (CCC 258-259). Hence inseparable but distinct from the Kingdom ad intra is the Kingdom of God ad extra. Quite simply, it is the Kingdom in its usual signification in respect to the living fact
and mystery of God’s indwelling-in His creation that He has made and
continually sustains.
This is a concept of "kingdom" we can more easily understand since it is the Kingdom of God which has come among us (Lk 17:21). Everything about the Kingdom of God’s Self within Himself, the Reign of Trinitarian Love, breaks through into time in the Person of Christ. The Trinity wanted to share Itself, Its Triune Nature—the Kingdom of Its Love with all humanity, so that we might “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). The Kingdom of God, eternally present within Himself, was thus made present in time and place at the moment of the Incarnation in Mary’s womb. Here in this womb the Kingdom of God, as a tiny zygote, was planted like a mustard seed, that over the course of thirty-three years grew into a man whose death on a tree has become the source of life for those who believe in Him.
This is a concept of "kingdom" we can more easily understand since it is the Kingdom of God which has come among us (Lk 17:21). Everything about the Kingdom of God’s Self within Himself, the Reign of Trinitarian Love, breaks through into time in the Person of Christ. The Trinity wanted to share Itself, Its Triune Nature—the Kingdom of Its Love with all humanity, so that we might “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). The Kingdom of God, eternally present within Himself, was thus made present in time and place at the moment of the Incarnation in Mary’s womb. Here in this womb the Kingdom of God, as a tiny zygote, was planted like a mustard seed, that over the course of thirty-three years grew into a man whose death on a tree has become the source of life for those who believe in Him.
This is why we hail Christ as King—He brings the reign of
God into our midst, in Him we find our humanity united to our God. He is our
gate to the Kingdom, and the One who establishes its reign in the world and within
our souls. So what about the fallen world outside us, the imperfections visible
in the Church, and the sin we see in ourselves and others—all seem to indicate
the Kingdom of God is hardly among us.
A Kingdom Yet to Come
Wherever God reigns, there is the Kingdom of God. If God
is Love, Truth, All-Merciful, All-Just, All-Good, then the Kingdom is where Love
reigns without selfishness, where “mercy and truth have embraced, [where] righteousness
and peace have kissed” (Ps 85:10), where Goodness has made its home. To the
extent that these attributes of the Kingdom of God are absent in the world and
in our life, to that extent the Kingdom of God remains to be fulfilled and actualised
therein. To bring about this reign of God requires human cooperation with
grace, but ultimately it is a work of grace, a work of the Holy Spirit who
uses our hands to serve, our hearts to love, our lips to praise.
Every day we pray in the ‘Our Father,’ “Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done.” In God the Kingdom already, and forever “is”, it does not
need to come, for His Will within Himself is “pure act,” eternally actualised
and actualising without impediment. Those who abide in heaven taste and breathe
this reality: the Kingdom for them has come, the Will of God in them has been
done, and its completion is eternally unfolding in their beatitude.
It is in the created order that the Kingdom awaits
fulfillment, and although this includes the blessed in general as a whole, almost
all of whom await the reception of their resurrected bodies, it namely applies
to the order of creation ‘below,’ the fallen universe, the fallen human race and
pilgrim Church on earth. The Will of God, which “desires all men to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4) and to “become partakers
of the divine nature,” is yet to be actualised completely and totally “on earth
as it is in heaven,” and thus we have been commanded by our Lord to pray for
its “coming,” just as we pray and wait for the final coming of the Lord.
The human soul is of course the focal point of the Coming-Kingdom
for which we pray. It is the battle-ground between Divine and satanic claims to
reign therein, the former alluring, the latter tempting, the human will to ‘let
it in’.
Essentially the Kingdom of God comes about “on earth” not
in rocks nor trees, nor in koalas, however cute they be, nor in human societies
as a whole, but in a communion of individual human souls who together make-up
the Body of the Church, whether they know it or not. It is via the soul that
the Kingdom expands its presence “on earth,” and this brings about a
transformed society and a natural creation, including the trees, rocks and koalas, brought nearer to its Creator
by means of the mediation of its divinised stewards: pilgrim saints, who speak
the praises to God that mute creation is unable to. Although it is sound to believe
there will be a time of universal peace, when the Church will flourish and God’s
Will shall be largely done “on earth as it is in heaven,” as taught by many fathers,
doctors and saints, it is only with the Second Coming of Christ, at the very
end, when God’s Kingdom shall be perfectly established on earth. The Catechism
summarises as follows:
Though already present in his Church, Christ's reign is nevertheless yet to be fulfilled "with power and great glory" by the King's return to earth. This reign is still under attack by the evil powers, even though they have been defeated definitively by Christ's Passover. Until everything is subject to him, "until there be realized new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church, in her sacraments and institutions, which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will pass, and she herself takes her place among the creatures which groan and travail yet and await the revelation of the sons of God." That is why Christians pray, above all in the Eucharist, to hasten Christ's return by saying to him: Marana tha! "Our Lord, come!" (CCC 671).
A Kingdom Already Come
Yet although we have been commanded to pray for the ‘coming
of the Kingdom,’ there is a paradoxical truth to be kept in mind—what awaits
fulfillment in the created order, and is yet to come about in the pilgrim
Church, is already complete in Christ who is the Head of the Church and “firstborn
of creation” (Col 1:18, 24, 15 resp.). “For by a single
offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,” (Heb 10:14), “and
through Him reconciled all things to Himself, having made peace [shlama
in Aramaic, shalom in Hebrew—"making complete”] by the blood of His
cross, through Him, whether things on earth, or things in heaven.” (Col 1:20).
In short, the Kingdom for which we
pray to come, simply “is” in Christ, in Him it has already come and its
dominion is eternal, without border or scope, its full power made manifest in
His Person.
The Kingdom "has come" in Christ in two distinct yet interconnected ways: in Himself as Person, and in Himself as Head of the Church. Firstly, by the very fact of His divine nature, as a Divine Person, He belongs to the Trinitarian Communion, the Trinitarian Kingdom. So that from the moment of the Word's Incarnation the Kingdom had come. It was wholly in Him.
Secondly, the Kingdom "has come" in Christ via His Paschal Mystery. That is, by the redeeming and sanctifying works He carried out as God-Man, substituting His humanity for our own, so that the Kingdom already wholly in Him, might be wholly in us, the rest of humanity. This is the Kingdom in the aspect of gift. Hence the Kingdom was not only established in Christ's own individual humanity, but the entire phenomenon of the restoration of humanity to God's Kingdom abides in Him. Paul speaks of this: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" (Eph 1:3).
Hence, first the Kingdom of the Trinity took abode in the perfect humanity of Christ, It then conquered human nature itself in Christ, through the Paschal Mystery. Christ's glorified humanity is proof of God's loving reign established not just in Christ as Person, but in Christ's Body the Church. What remains to be done is the ‘transferal’ or ‘transmission’ of the Kingdom in Christ to His members. The Reign and Headship of Christ must pour down from He the Head of the Church to us its pilgrim members.
The Kingdom "has come" in Christ in two distinct yet interconnected ways: in Himself as Person, and in Himself as Head of the Church. Firstly, by the very fact of His divine nature, as a Divine Person, He belongs to the Trinitarian Communion, the Trinitarian Kingdom. So that from the moment of the Word's Incarnation the Kingdom had come. It was wholly in Him.
Secondly, the Kingdom "has come" in Christ via His Paschal Mystery. That is, by the redeeming and sanctifying works He carried out as God-Man, substituting His humanity for our own, so that the Kingdom already wholly in Him, might be wholly in us, the rest of humanity. This is the Kingdom in the aspect of gift. Hence the Kingdom was not only established in Christ's own individual humanity, but the entire phenomenon of the restoration of humanity to God's Kingdom abides in Him. Paul speaks of this: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" (Eph 1:3).
Hence, first the Kingdom of the Trinity took abode in the perfect humanity of Christ, It then conquered human nature itself in Christ, through the Paschal Mystery. Christ's glorified humanity is proof of God's loving reign established not just in Christ as Person, but in Christ's Body the Church. What remains to be done is the ‘transferal’ or ‘transmission’ of the Kingdom in Christ to His members. The Reign and Headship of Christ must pour down from He the Head of the Church to us its pilgrim members.
This requires our submission to the
reign of Christ—an offense to the modern ear. But there is no other way around
it, we must submit ourselves to the lordship and dominion of God in Christ, not
as slaves, but as children who acknowledge the greatness and might of our
source. We come as creatures to our Creator, as children to our Father, as
disciples to our Master, as members of Christ’s Body, clothed in the royal
dignity of His Blood. Such is the power of the Eucharist we receive. Christ is
our King and we belong to Him not as something apart from Himself, but as flesh
of His flesh, blood of His blood. Words similar to what Adam used when he first
saw Eve—this is the kind of love God has for us. He does not want slaves nor
servants. He wants to reign in us so that we might reign in Him “forever and
ever” (Rev 22:5).
Allowing God to Reign in Us
The motif of allowing God to reign in our life has almost
become a cliché in many Christian circles. This should not lead us to
undermine its importance, but it should also lead us to caution, since what we
often hear in this regard is a good message, but half the message. The extent
to which God must reign in our life and what this means can only be fully realised
and appreciated in the light of explicit Catholic faith and teaching, which benefits
from “the fullness of the means of salvation”—“of grace and truth entrusted to
the Church” by Christ who said: “you are Peter, and on this rock [and not
another] I will build My church” (Mt 16:18).[7]
Every person is called to submit themselves to God’s
reign, doing so by surrendering to God, acknowledging Him as one’s Father and
Lord, believing Him and in the one whom He has sent for the remission of our
sins (Jn 6:29). Most Protestants, especially evangelicals, are adept at making
personal declarations of faith and surrender to God in Christ.
Jesus, I accept you as my Lord and Saviour, come into my life, reign in it. I believe in your unconditional love for me. Fill me with your love.
It’s a shame Catholics do not do this more often. It’s
basic to Christianity itself and must complement our sacramental life. Making
repeated acts of faith in Jesus and God’s love for us should colour our private
prayer.
But there is more to merely being in the state of
grace, possessing as it were the gift of salvation in Christ (Eph 2:8) which
can indeed be lost through sin, although retainable through repentance.[8] For
any Christian soul who is not in the state of mortal sin, possesses sanctifying
grace. And as we know, there is a big difference between simply ‘not being in
mortal sin’ and ‘being a saint’. To merely possess sanctifying grace is only the
beginning of allowing Christ to reign in us: it’s to possess the mustard seed.
The mustard seed still needs to grow. In the words of Peter: “you must grow in
respect to salvation” (lit. in the Greek, “you must grow in/into salvation”).[9]
How God Reigned in the Humanity of Christ
God wants to reign in us totally and completely, just as
He did in Christ’s humanity. To appreciate what this means let us envisage Christ’s
humanity: He had a soul, with the faculties of an intellect that had human thoughts,
a memory that had human memories, and a human will that made free acts. Christ in
His humanity had an imagination too, a body, and did every manner of chaste and
ordinary act common to human life—eating, drinking, sleeping, working, walking,
praying, talking, and so on. Then we consider all the breaths He made,
heartbeats, and all the tiny cellular movements that took place in His flesh. In
all these countless actions, volitional and autonomous, there was not only a
human nature at work, but a divine nature. All that Christ did in His humanity,
His Divinity did too, through His humanity. Thus, every action of Christ’s humanity
was a perfect act of praise, glory and love offered to the Father, on behalf of
every human being and all creation, in reparation for the absence of such praise,
glory and love in our actions.
‘Do Everything in the Name of the Lord’
If this is what God’s reign looked like in Christ our
Head, then what does God’s reign look like in us who are the members of His
Body? It will involve the fulfilment of Paul’s decree: “And whatever you do, in
word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God
the Father through him” (Col 3:17). We know that when we die and approach the
judgement seat of God, every action of our lives will appear in a mighty line,
either shining with glory for the Lord, tepidly dim, or dark in sin. “For God
will being every act into judgement, including every secret thing, whether good
or evil” (Eccles 12:14).
For the most part one can imagine that most people’s
actions in life are perhaps neither light nor dark, simply carried out as a
matter of course, with neither bad intent, nor a divine motivation. Such acts are
‘grey,’ ‘nothing acts’. As Catholics we are very familiar with the concept of
“offering it up,” but we often limit this understanding to pains suffered, as
though that alone can be offered up to God. But, short of sin, and granted that
crosses are objectively greater offerings, nevertheless, everything in our
lives, even the supposed ‘bland acts,’ are worthy of being offered to God, because
Christ who became one of us, sanctified human existence. Even sin can be
offered to God, not as a positive offering of love, for sure, but as an
offering surrendered in loving repentance which God can transform, covering
over its ugliness with the beauty of what should have been done instead.
We really should be madly obsessed with surrendering
everything to God, impregnating as it were, all ours actions with love and
praise, asking Jesus to take our acts and make them His, to supply for their
lack, and that nothing we do would fail to give anything but perfect glory to
God. Our first prayer when waking should offer up the day that will be, and our
final prayer upon sleeping should offer up the day that has been. Even past
years, decades, can be offered up, it’s never too late, “today is the day of
salvation” (2 Cor 6:2).
Every act we do united with Jesus and His acts, become
powerful, animated by the Holy Spirit, and are capable of mediating Christ’s
saving and sanctifying power into the world of men, ministering to needs beyond
our knowing, even for the benefit of the holy souls in purgatory. The glorified
humanity of Christ has done its work, now it’s our turn, and He wants our
humanity to repeat the reign He established within Himself. Our humanity
becomes a substrate for God to work anew, through Christ, in this world—the
mystery of the Incarnation, with all its redeeming and sanctifying power, expanding
in us.
Our thoughts, are so precious, that St. John of the Cross
wrote: “One human thought alone is worth more than the entire world, hence God
alone is worthy of it.”[10] The
same can be said about all our acts: they are precious in the sight of God. He
wants everything. “He’s a jealous God” (Ex 34:14). Our memories, even the bad
ones, can be offered to God sealed with the loving intention that it make reparation
for those who use their memories to relive past sins, or to stir up grudges. Our
heartbeat, breaths, steps, can be offered up as little acts of love. The
possibilities are innumerable.
Just imagine arriving at the judgement seat of God, and
thanks be to His teaching and grace, that we had continually practiced surrendering
our acts to Him as an offering of praise, love and thanksgiving etc., so that He
could reign therein. That no sin of ours had been left unrepented, unconfessed,
and that God’s love had so dominated our lives, and charged our actions, even
the smallest, that there was nothing left for God to purify in our souls. “Whatever
you ask in My name, this I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the
Son.” (Jn 14:13).
God’s Reign in Mary
In turning to Mary, we see exactly what the fulfillment
of our ideal looks like. Here is a soul, a creature—unlike Christ, who even though
possessing a human nature remained God—in whom God’s reign was made fully
manifest. Hence the appellation by the angel: “Hail, full of grace,” and by
Elizabeth, “blessed are you among women”. We know Christ the King already established
the Kingdom perfectly in His own humanity, but in Mary we see the perfect and
successful transmission of that very Kingdom into a creature. She is the
culmination of God’s reign in the created order, the crowning jewel of Christ’s
Church, and no other creature will surpass what God has done in Her. The words
spoken to Judith in the Old Testament apply to Mary: “You are the exaltation of
Jerusalem, you are the great glory of Israel, you are the splendid boast of our
people!” (Judith 15:9).
We have then our King who is Christ and our Queen who is
Mary, the former, God Himself, the latter, the Mother of God, a human creature chosen
and elected by God. Mary dared to ask that God would reign in Her and this He
did in the Person of Christ Her King. We see a foreshadowing of this mystery in
the Old Testament: “And King Solomon gave to the queen of Sheba all that she
desired, whatever she asked.” (2 Chron 9:12).
It is now our turn to ask the King that He would reign in
us and in all our acts, and what better way than honouring the Queen in our
prayer and homes, asking Her for this favour also. He who changed the water
into wine at Her bequest will surely not fail to divinise our acts if She so asks.
Consider how the Persian King Ahasuerus, a temperamental human being, treated
his queen: “And the king said to her, ‘What is it, Queen Esther? What is your
request? It shall be given you, even to the half of my kingdom.’” (Est 5:3).
Christ would offer far more to His Queen Mother, and in fact He did, even to
the fullness of His Kingdom, and hence the Church meditates and celebrates the
coronation of Mary as Queen, just as Jesus is honoured as King, especially on
the feast of Christus Rex.
Our Personal Coronation of the King and Queen
“The Kingdom of God” as a concept is something which can
go over our heads. It’s so easy to wind our way down theological paths that go
this way and that, lost in the realm of abstraction. But when we put faces to this
Kingdom, when we have a King and Queen, and names to give them, Jesus and Mary,
we find ourselves planted on the ground, securely in the mystery of the
Incarnation. This after all, is what God wants for us—the Kingdom came to us in
human flesh, “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4), and He does not want us to invent
elaborate paths that negate the King and Queen He has given us.
God Himself has anointed and crowned Jesus as King, and
Mary as Queen, and both reign now in heaven. We ourselves, whether Christian, atheist,
neo-pagan or Satanist, have already crowned Jesus and Mary as King and Queen, involuntarily
by default, simply by the fact of our sins which God’s providence used in their
coronation. Our sins fashioned the crown of thorns for Jesus’ coronation on the
cross. Our sins caused Jesus to bleed, by which He anointed His Mother as Queen
as She stood at the cross. This sorrowful coronation we mystically repeat every
time we sin.
But what remains for us to do is to carry out our own
personal coronation of Jesus and Mary, not the sorrowful one which our sins carry
out, but a glorious one. God has crowned Jesus and Mary as King and Queen in
glory, and He did so through the ministration of the angels. The blessed in
heaven have already done the same, and the purging souls are in the process of
completing their personal coronation of Jesus and Mary. We, the Church on
earth, must do the same. If the reign of God wants to establish itself in our
soul, in our lives, and in our every act, then to bring this reign to
perfection we must coronate, as it were, Jesus and Mary in our souls, in our
lives and in our every act; doing so also as a Body, in the liturgy, in
fellowship and in our homes. Everything we do must worship Jesus as King, and
hail Mary as Queen. God Himself has done it, now it’s our turn. This will
enable the reign of God to actualise itself in us and “on the earth”—giving permission
to God, in His King and Queen, to reign.
Much could be said on this, but it’s time for this
article to end. If one piece of advice was given to aid in going about this, we
would have to simply point to St. Joseph who did exactly all this perfectly. In
the words of the Egyptian King, “Go to Joseph; what he says to you, do” (Gen
41:55), because he who was made Father to Jesus, has been “made a father to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah” (Is 22:21), he will
instruct by the Holy Spirit, the children of the Kingdom—how to live in it, how
to honour its King and Queen, and those who listen to and heed the silent
witness of his life “shall enter the kingdom of heaven.” For it is not those
who say “Lord, Lord. King, King. Queen, Queen,” that “shall enter the kingdom
of heaven,” but he who does on earth the will of the Father in heaven (Mt 7:21).
[1]
“The Kingdom of heaven,” literally, “heavens” in Greek, is a synonym for the
Kingdom of God whose principal abode and dominion is “in the heavens”.
[2]
Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the
Jordan to the Transfiguration, vol 1., (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 49-50.
[3]
This, among other direct statements, is in direct contradiction of those who
claim such a stance was pre-conciliar, and that the council itself ‘did away’
with it. For example, Richard McBrien in The Church: The Evolution of
Catholicism (New York: HarperOne, 2009) wrongly asserts: “This teaching is
in contrast to the common preconcillar assumption that the Church is the
Kingdom of God on earth. Thus, parables of the Kingdom were regularly
interpreted by preaches, catechists, and theologians alike as parables of the
Church. The tendency to equate the Church with the Kingdom of God was denounced
as a form of “triumphalism” in a famous intervention at Vatican II by Bishop
Emile Jozef De Smedt (d. 1995) of Bruges, Belgium.”(180). However, all documentative
evidence to the contrary. True, the Kingdom of God cannot solely be understood
in narrow ecclesiological terms, but genuine ecclesiology is necessarily Christocentric
and pertains to the mystery of God.
[4]
Op.cit., Ratzinger, 61.
[5]
Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theologie, I, p.67, in op.cit., Ratzinger, 55.
[6]
This basic principle is integral to the Jewish thought that is at the root of
this Christian understanding. The Shekinah, God’s Presence, is associated with
Malkut—the kingship, reign or kingdom of God.
[7]
Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html,
3 § 4-5. See also CCC
816.
[8]
For Catholics, possessing the knowledge of the sacrament of Confession as
something ordained by Christ (Jn 20:23), the desire to confess to a priest, and
the ratification of this as soon as possible (if concretely possible), is required for the forgiveness
of mortal sin. A forgiveness technically already granted in Christ, and
bestowed through perfect contrition even before confession—but the desire to, and
act of confessing, is integral to the genuineness of a Catholic’s perfect contrition.
Protestants who are ignorant of the sacrament, are objectively speaking, not
under this law set by Christ and clarified by His Church, and thus even
forgiveness of mortal sin via perfect contrition does not require the desire to
confess, or action of confessing to a Catholic priest. Still, the latter is in
an impoverished position, lacking the unique and efficacious gift of the
sacrament Christ Himself instituted.
[9]
αὐξηθῆτε εἰς σωτηρίαν
[10]
The Sayings of Light and Love, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio
Rodriguez (1991).
