KINGDOM OF GOD

As men and women strengthened in baptism by Christ, we long for and are expected to work toward the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. This is one of three essential threads of which the Our Father is woven, that central prayer whose petitions furnish the ground and thrust of all our hope. Each of the three great petitions calls upon God for basically the same thing: that the name of God be made holy on earth as in heaven; that his kingdom take root not only in eternity but also in time; that God’s will be likewise effective among men as among the members of the Trinity.

These three things – name, kingdom, will – are variations on the same reality, namely, the hidden and inner life of God, his mind and heart that long to pierce the world’s darkness and sin, to awaken a renewed humanity to the hope of the new heaven and the new earth. “In this new universe, the heavenly Jerusalem,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, “God will have his dwelling among men. ‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away’ [Rev 21:4]” (1044).

Indeed, Jesus’ oft-repeated proclamation of the kingdom remains the central motif of his preaching, as witness the extraordinary frequency with which the word itself occurs in the New Testament – 122 times, of which 90 are from the lips of Christ himself. What is at stake here is not the world beyond, but God himself, in his personal activity that sets about the work of salvation everywhere. Thus the phrase “the kingdom of God” points to God’s rule, his living power over the world. Jesus in his very Person is the mystery of the kingdom, rendered as pure gift to those who love him.

“Jesus is the Kingdom,” writes Joseph Ratzinger, “not simply by virtue of his physical presence but through the Holy Spirit’s radiant power flowing forth from him. In his Spirit-filled activity, smashing the demonic enslavement of man, the Kingdom of God becomes reality, God taking the government of this world into his own hands. Let us remember that God’s Kingdom is an event, not a sphere. Jesus’ actions, words, sufferings break the power of that alienation which lies so heavily on human life” (Eschatology, pp. 34-35).

Everything is intended to bear on this point, to converge upon the sheer, prodigal outpouring of divine love. Under the circumstances, “the truth which the Gospel teaches about God requires a certain change in focus with regard to eschatology. First of all, eschatology is not what will take place in the future, something happening only after earthly life is finished. Eschatology has already begun with the coming of Christ. The ultimate eschatological event was His redemptive Death and His Resurrection. This is the beginning of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (cf. Rev 21:1)” (Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, pp. 184-185).

The Kingdom Begun and Yet to Come • Thus the hope on which all Christians depend, that is, the irruption in time and space of the kingdom announced by Jesus, has already begun: first through the enfleshment of the Eternal Word in Christ’s life, death, and Resurrection; then through the instrument of the Church, which continues that saving presence in the world, especially in her sacraments. Reflecting on Jesus’ revelation of the kingdom, the Catechism says: “By his word, through signs that manifest the reign of God, and by sending out his disciples, Jesus calls all people to come together around him. But above all in the great Paschal mystery – his death on the cross and his Resurrection – he would accomplish the coming of his kingdom” (542). He announces a kingdom for everyone, especially the lowly, more accessible to repentant sinners than the self-righteous (CCC 543-545). He shares authority in this kingdom with the Twelve, with Peter at their head (CCC 551-553). He offers a foretaste of the fullness of the kingdom in the Transfiguration, with its manifestation of his own divine glory (CCC 554-556).

But the kingdom will never achieve lasting fullness in this world; its final consummation is something whose glorious unfolding we await in hope. As St. Paul reminds us, “In hope we were saved” (Rom 8:24); and the trajectory of that hope is aimed at a reality both present and still to come.
Nevertheless, as Ratzinger says, in its encounter with the reality of the risen Lord “Christianity knew that a most significant coming had already taken place. It no longer proclaimed a pure theology of hope, living from mere expectation of the future, but pointed to a ‘now’ in which the promise had already become presence. Such a present was, of course, itself hope, for it bears the future within itself” (Eschatology, pp. 44-45).

To persist in Christian hope is thus to live between times, amid parentheses bound by both time and eternity. It is to pine for that perfection of God’s kingdom in which he will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28), in which the hunger and thirst for justice and peace will at last be assuaged and the liberty of the sons of God finally manifested (cf. Rom 8:19, 21), in which the Church herself will stand triumphant before God, “holy and immaculate” (Eph 5:27) forever. “Sacred Scripture calls this mysterious renewal, which will transform humanity and the world, ‘new heavens and a new earth’ [2 Pet 3:13]. It will be the definitive realization of God’s plan to bring under a single head ‘all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth’ [Eph 1:10]” (CCC 1043).

The long-awaited dawn of God’s kingdom will thereupon confer lasting fulfillment not only upon the individual believer but upon the entire Church, including the redeemed actuality of the world and creation as well. What the evil of sin wrought in terms of enmity and estrangement from God, self, neighbor, and cosmos, the grace of the kingdom will most wonderfully overcome, miraculously reconstituting that wholeness of being which God intended from the beginning.
Thus in the final doxology of the Lord’s Prayer (“For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever”) in which the three petitions are once more taken up, the Church permanently underscores the importance of the Our Father and its vibrant relation to the coming of God’s kingdom. Despite the mendacity of the devil, who falsely attributes to himself the three titles of kingship, power, and glory, “Christ, the Lord, restores them to his Father and our Father, until he hands over the kingdom to him when the mystery of salvation will be brought to its completion and God will be all in all” (1 Cor 15:24-28; quoted in CCC 2855).

We know neither the time when the kingdom will definitively arrive nor the precise way in which the world’s transfiguration will take place. As Jesus himself says, “about that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, not even the Son; only the Father” (Mk 13:32). It is not possible for any man to know the hour. Indeed, the hour possesses us, not we the hour. All we can bring to the promised hour is that childlike and trusting surrender of self which, imitating Jesus, constantly reposes itself in hope before the Father. That and an ardent willingness to work for the promised transformation, whose foreshadowing is mysteriously evidenced by our efforts to advance his kingdom (cf. CCC 1049).

See: Beatific Vision; Eschaton; Heaven; Judgment, General; Last Things; Resurrection of the Dead.
Suggested Readings: CCC 541-556, 1042-1050, 1060, 2816-2821, 2855, 2857, 2859. J. Ratzinger, Eschatology.

Regis Martin

Russell Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright © 1997, Our Sunday Visitor.

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Last Updated: Sunday, April 01, 2001 01:25:11 PM