My very wise Director, or Jedi Master, as I sometimes think of him, just smiled to me and shook his head.
God already is in charge, he said. When the Kingdom of God comes, that just means we're all finally going to realize it.
The wonder of the Kingdom of God isn't that God's going to land on earth and institute some utopian sort of government that will make everything awesome and perfect. The wonder is that the temptations will be gone, our bodies will be glorified just like our souls have been through baptism, and we will all everyday be aware that God is King.
Of course, God is King today. God was King yesterday. God will always be King, now and forever, Amen. His Kingship wont become more glorious than it is right now, ever, because God does not change, nor does his glory fluctuate with passing centuries, with ages of doubt, through eras of trial. But we will finally have an awareness of it that won't fluctuate with our doubts and trials.
When the Kingdom of God comes - when all men of this earth are made plainly aware that He is King, and that His kingship is sooo good - there will be no more need of a government, of a police force, of written laws, of a judicial system. We will all live exuberantly in full awareness of God; we will all live in such complete and full love for Him, beholding his beautiful face, and beholding His face in all places where it is (in each person, in all life) we will love all creation as well.
In Isaiah 11, the prophet spoke about wolves and lambs, lions and calfs, and leopards and goats laying down together before a running stream, no longer consuming each other for strength, but all grazing off the living land for food when this blessed kingdom comes. Our very sinful inclinations to seek emotional strength through others weakness will be gone. Our very sinful natures, and the sinful nature of the world, will be fundamentally corrected on this blessed day.
When the army of evil is defeated, and the demons who tempt us away from God are no more - there will be no more such thing as sin. No more disordered desires. No more feelings or actions of hate towards are neighbors. Only love and charity for all, and desires directed towards the goodness of God, the goodness which we were created for. The goodness which is our purpose. The goodness that fills us up.
One of the most beautiful visions from the Book of Revelation is that there will be no more need of the Sun, nor will there be day or night, because God will be our light, and he will be with us always.
The sun to us today is a physical guarenteer of light, of sight. It guides us. It gives us food, and thus, our strength. It warms us. It is a fairly universal statement that in this present state of the world, we need this sun for protection and life.
God knows this. He put the sun there. Now think about today's political structures.
To us today, as we struggle with sin that leads us to commit evil deeds, government is a guarenteer of law and order and relative peace compared to a world where sin reigned unchecked and supreme. The government creates education systems to guide us. They help strengthen our material needs through various programs and interactions, however their ideologies determine to do so. While we might not always agree with our government's ideologies, is it not fairly safe to say that we are safer with it than without it? A world without government would put us at a far greater risk to the chaos of unchecked crime, would it not? In the present state of the universe, we need government.
God knows this. He put our government there. Its our safeguard for order in a world where men are inclined to sin.
But a day is coming when we won't need government. When we will all be aware.
Now here's perhaps the most important part. Since Christ's coming, we have all been urged to work towards this awareness today. Governmental laws forbid by punishment crimes of stealing, murder, etc...yet there are many, thanks to the pursuit of holiness, the building of friendship with God, who do not need the threat of punishment to refrain them from these infractions. Rather, their love for God is plenty the motivation. Their awareness of His goodness and the fact that he is king.
In this world of sin, we are all born to disordered desires, of many, many messed up kinds. But in becoming holy, becoming God's lover, these disordered desires through grace begin to dissapear. And through this holiness, we begin to realize more and more, and every moment, that God indeed is King.
We say that Christians are resident aliens of this world. We live here, and we love our countries - for much the reasons listed above - yet all the same, if an enlightened Christian were to be asked who is his king, the answer would be indoubtedly, God.
In baptism, through grace, we are made citizens of the Kingdom of God. We accept God as our King. If we were baptized infants, than our parents made a promise to make us aware from the first moments that our minds could comprehend that God is our King; thus, in either scenarios, infant or older, the awareness of God's dominion ought to be the same. Yet it is in all of our journey's beyond baptism that this awareness becomes a living awareness, not just an abstract belief.
Before meditating upon the written words above from my Spiritual Director, I had often considered the fruits of baptism to be two-fold - spiritual resurrection in Christ, and formal membership into the Roman Catholic Church, specifically in a Roman Catholic Parish. I had often considered the later fruit to be a lesser benefit to the former. Now I realize they are won.
The spiritual resurrection in Christ, the soul's redemption, is manifested in the formal membership of the Church. This doesn't mean that the membership in the Church is a symbol of residency in God's kingdom; it means that residency in God's kingdom has been made tangible, real, physical in membership in the Church, because God fully understands are hard headedness and that we need Him to make all this abstract stuff more visible.
Praise Him!
Praise Him for the Church. Praise Him for naming Peter his vicar, for giving the dispensation of grace over to men to perform on earth. Praise Him that through the Spirit's mystical dwelling in the Church, we can know that Christ and the Church are one, as St. Joan of Arc famously said - and we can know that in following the Church and having true membership in it, we are truly members of the Kingdom of God, on earth, in the form that it takes today in a world in transition. For truly, who is our Pope but the legate for God?
The Church's head is Christ. We are a nation not of blood or land, but of awareness that He is King, and a common pursuit to know him more.
We are a nation, today, have always been and always will be, whose only King is God.
We follow men chosen by God with the purpose to help us become more aware of our King, of what he wants in our lives (through spiritual direction and homilies) and in our societies (through statements from our Bishops, the councils).
And we follow and love our Pope, for the reason that he guides all of our Church to the truest worship of Christ, God, our King.
The growth of the Kingdom of God is synanomous with the growth of the institutional and (at the same time) mystical Church, for it is in the Church that the Kingdom comes into our hearts.
I don't much know what the Kingdom of God will look like in fulfillment, when the Satan and his minions all are cast away. But I do know what that Kingdom looks like today, and I am proud to call myself a mystical member of it, as well as a formal member of it, as a Roman Catholic in good standing and a parishioner of our Lady of the Woods of the Arch Diocese of Detroit. And I love the men that God has chosen as Priests, and Bishops, and the Popes who have guided us all, to come to know Him more.
For knowing Him is the greatest joy. Praise God for what he has built on this earth, upon Peter the stone, so that I could so easily and tangibly come to know the Lord - and come to know that He is King!
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