"God's Kingdom: Near or Far?"

Friday, March 28, 2014

I admit to not absorbing too much this week, because the verse that introduces the reflection was used at my father’s rosary.  I almost wrote “death rosary”, but that seemed morbid.  Then I worried that people who haven’t been through a Catholic mourning process wouldn’t know the significance.

Monsignor Jamail gave a homily that has stuck with me (not just because he got my name wrong).  Not even because that was my job – to pick the readings for the funeral and the service the night before.  It was perfect for my dad – a lawyer who understand the law of compassion and faithfulness.  Who thinks of others always.  The homily ended, “And Tom, you are not far from the Kingdom of God.”

Of course, I’ve written on this blog that the Kingdom of God is here.  That we are living in the Kingdom of God.  It’s not some magical thing that will come down and be delivered to us all in one piece someday.  It’s something we build in the now.

Another story I am rereading has a passage where two characters think on the possibilities of the Space Program.  One turns to the other and says (paraphrase) ‘Sometimes when this world is unusually hateful, I think that perhaps there was some other place where I ought to have been.  I don’t know how I would find the place, and I can’t imagine it exists, but the universe is so very wide…so I wonder, if only I weren’t so far away…”

The other character eventually responds that you can’t just leave your home planet while it has terrible, hellish places on it.  You have to stay and fight.

I think that’s what really sets how close or far you think the Kingdom of Heaven is.  Do you think of it as some faraway place that is not so hateful – that if you could only reach, you could rest and find peace and belonging?  If so, longing for it and preparing for it take up your life.  And my father believed that.  He believed that “the purpose of life on Earth is to make oneself worthy of eternal life with God”.  Direct quote this time.  It led him to do a lot of good and continually make himself a better person.

But I think that I believe that you have to stay and fight.  I believe that we must build the Kingdom of God here on Earth – that that is the purpose of life on Earth.  That we must fight to bring about that peaceful, loving world we long for.  The advantage is, we can take action to get there right now.  Which is both wonderful and terrifying.

I suppose either way it could seem far away – but you’ve got to like the process of getting there in the second option better.