Your kingdom come. Today!

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Meditation for the Feast of Christ the King, Year C2

Today, especially in Poland, we have a poor idea of what a king, kingdom, reign are. For contemporaries, it is a distant past, imaginable today only thanks to movies or series. How much more difficult to understand what the kingship of Jesus consists of when he himself says that his kingdom is not of this world! We have no reference points on earth for Christ’s heavenly kingship. Certainly His kingdom is a hundred times different, more beautiful than the earthly ideal of a kingdom, and from the most prudent and wise earthly ruler Christ is a hundred times greater and better King, because He is God, so His reign is God’s kingship.

In God’s kingdom, being subject is not a torment, but a saving – nomen omen – privilege. The Gospel of this Sunday shows that it is enough to believe in this kingdom and ask Christ the King to be able to be with Him in this reality. The promise is clear – “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” While this dialogue is taking place in the face of death, this promise applies to all of us, here and now. We don’t have to die to live in Jesus’ kingdom. It is here and now. Theology uses a specific term for this reality – “already and not yet”. This means that God’s kingdom is already a human experience, although it will be fully revealed at the second coming of Jesus to earth.

This reality is very well illustrated by words which are probably one of our most frequent prayers. When in the Lord’s Prayer we ask God the Father to give us our daily bread TODAY, forgive us our sins, not to put us to the test and save us from evil, we also ask that His kingdom come. This is a request for this kingdom to come into existence TODAY. And this is not a request for parousia today, for the world to end today. It is a request that today I experience a life like in God’s kingdom, where God’s name is blessed and His will is done.

I am not sure if this is how the Lord’s Prayer is interpreted by theology, but I have such an intuition that God’s kingdom on earth is realized when Jesus is worshiped (the Father is glorified through the Son) and when God’s commandments are carried out. Liturgy and morality. Not one or the other, not one more and the other less, but both realities in parallel. Prayer that does not translate into life will be devotion; and who, without God’s Spirit animated by the liturgy, is able to implement the Decalogue or fulfill the invocations from the Mount of Beatitudes?

Public acts of confessing Christ as King for nothing, with the participation of the episcopate and the rulers; to legally decree God’s precepts and appeal for social recognition of Jesus’ reign when Christ will not become the King and Lord of each of us. It is only under the influence of the subjects of God’s kingdom, who freely and consciously choose Jesus Christ as their King and Lord, that His kingship can be realized on earth. Only when we confidently confess: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”, will Christ reign in the public sphere – social, economic, political and cultural. Then we will be with Him in paradise.