5 minutes reading time (992 words)

Lesson for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Saturday, 15 June 2024

218 Hits

Christ Sees the Church as a Kingdom, not as a Club

My dear brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ's favourite topic, it could be argued, was "the Kingdom of God." His first public sermon began with "The Kingdom of God is at hand," and from then on, he kept talking about it, as in today's Gospel. If there is a Kingdom, there must also be a King, and if there is a King, there must be subjects. That's how he sees the Church, as a Kingdom, not merely as some kind of club.

Today we can ask ourselves if that's how we see Church. When we pray, "Thy Kingdom come," do we mean the same thing that Jesus meant when he taught us that prayer? God's Kingdom is the realm where hearts obey him out of faith and love.

The kingdom of this world is the realm where hearts obey themselves out of self-centeredness, egoism, and fear. If we really want to help Christ redeem the kingdom of this world by transforming it, through his grace, into the Kingdom of Christ, we have to keep hearkening to the King and carrying out his commands, even when they are uncomfortable for our selfish tendencies. Obeying someone else, though, is almost always a challenge for us sinners.

Jesus knows this, and so he doesn't ask us for blind, mindless obedience. He uses parables to explain and promise that by following and obeying him, our lives will be fruitful.

The virtues that give true, lasting beauty to our lives, that give our lives meaning and deep happiness (virtues like wisdom, courage, self-control, and Christ-like love), are like the seeds in the Lord's parables. They are planted in our hearts at baptism, and as we follow and obey Christ in our daily lives, they grow and flourish.

Being good citizens of Christ's Kingdom is the sure path to an abundant spiritual harvest here on earth and forever in heaven.

The Danger of Routine

One threat to being good citizens of God's Kingdom is what spiritual writers call "falling into routine."

Routine is just going through the motions of being a faithful Catholic but forgetting about the meaning behind those motions. We have always gone to Mass and always prayed (or at least "said our prayers"), ever since we were kids, and we feel a kind of comfortable inertia in continuing to do so.

We have a vague sense that one ought to do such things, and we also have a vague sense that if we fail to do them, we will feel guilty for some reason. And we don't want to add an uncomfortable guilty feeling to our already over-stressed emotional world. So, we keep going through the motions of being a Catholic.

This is a threat for all of us, even priests, because the real reasons behind our spiritual activities - like prayer, the sacraments, and moral discipline - are below the surface; we must try to keep them in mind.

It's also a dangerous threat, because it dries up our personal relationship with Christ, which is what being a Christian is all about. I recently read an article in which the author was reminiscing about an experience of sleeping over at a friend's house when he was in eighth grade.

As he and his friend went down to the basement to go to bed, he saw his friends' parents sitting on the couch watching television, the wife cuddling against the husband, who had his arm around her.

They looked like a happy couple. Two months later they were divorced. He asked his friend how they could be so happy together, and then get divorced. The friend told him that they just kept up appearances for the kids' sake, but they were just appearances. That's falling into routine; it's thinking of obedience to our King as a list of rules instead of as a relationship of love, and it chokes off our spiritual growth.

Being Creative Citizens of Christ's Kingdom

By making us citizens of his Kingdom and his messengers and representatives in this world, God gives each one of us the opportunity to put our own creativity at the service of that Kingdom.

God is continuously inviting us to follow him, to build our lives on the rock of his friendship by obeying his commandments and his teaching. But the commandments are just the beginning of the spiritual life. God doesn't want us to be robots; he wants us to be companions, to be free citizens of heaven.

He doesn't program us, like machines; he inspires us, like soldiers or artists. He wants us to get to know his plan, and then to freely contribute with our own creativity, intelligence, and imagination (gifts he has given us) to the task of building up his Kingdom in the world.

God didn't draw the architectural plans for the great gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Rather, he gave intelligence and creativity to his people, and they used those gifts to do something wonderful, beautiful, and lasting for God and for their fellow men.

Think of all the saints in history who used their freedom to find better, more ingenious ways to love God and love their neighbour, and in so doing they made everlasting contributions to Christ's Kingdom. We all have that same freedom - it is a gift of God's mercy!

That's what it means to be a Christian: to build our lives on the solid foundation of friendship with Christ and obedience to his Kingship, but to build energetically and creatively, as love always does. That goes for every Christian, not just priests and nuns, but every one of us!

Today Christ will renew his commitment to us in this Mass. When he does, let's thank him for making his Church so much more than just a religious club, and let's renew our commitment to his everlasting Kingdom.