If some people find it difficult to identify with God as Father- because of their own troubled relationships with their earthly fathers-how much more must they miss the relevance of God as King. If human fathers are a vanishing breed, then human monarchs are practically extinct.

My country takes pride that its history began with the overthrow of a king, and that no sovereign has ever ruled our land since then. Many other countries, in Europe for example, have retained monarchs, but only as ceremonial figures with little authority or power. Most of us, growing up, learned about the ancient ideal of kingship, for the most part, from fairy tales.

I dare say we’re missing something here. We’re missing an idea that beats as the heart of the Gospel. For Jesus came for nothing if not to establish a kingdom: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mt. 10:7).

The idea of the kingdom is obviously important to Jesus and the sacred writers of the New Testament. In Matthew’s Gospel alone, there are almost 40 references to the "kingdom of God" and the "kingdom of heaven." Throughout the Gospels, Jesus develops the idea mostly in parables, though sometimes He puts the matter quite plainly: "[T]he kingdom of God is in the midst of you" (Lk. 17:21).

Yet, for us today, the meaning of even these seemingly simple statements can be elusive. In order for us to understand what Jesus meant by kingdom, we need to understand what "kingdom" meant in His language and His nation.

Send in the Crowns
The word "kingdom" had a concrete historical meaning for the people of Israel. Indeed, the twelve tribes of Israel considered themselves, collectively, to be the "kingdom of God."

For many centuries, from the Exodus until around 1000 B.C., the tribes lived in the Promised Land, recognizing no king but Yahweh (cf. Deut. 33:5). That was the theory, at least. The truth, however, is that the people still had something of an inferiority complex, and they wanted their nation to be like other nations, with the same symbols of worldly power. They wanted to have a king, a throne, a royal dynasty. In the Book of Judges, we see that the people clamored to crown the great warrior Gideon. But Gideon said to them: "I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the LORD will rule over you" (Judg. 8:23). Still, the cry arose again in another generation: "[A]ppoint for us a king to govern us like all the nations" (1 Sam. 8:5).

God let them have their way- though, in the long run, He was letting them have His way. For the dynasty that would soon establish itself was the line of King David, who was a man after God’s own heart (cf. 1 Sam. 13:14); and from the line of David would come a king who would bring all the nations of the world under the kingship of God. God said to David: "Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage" (Ps. 2:8). And David’s house would reign not only universally, but everlastingly. That promise was the substance of God’s covenant with David: "I will raise up your offspring after you . . . I will be his father, and he shall be my son. . . . And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever" (2 Sam. 7:12, 14, 16). Even when the Davidic line was in its apparent downfall-when the lands of the kingdom were shattered by rebellion and the people were scattered in exile-even then, Israel’s prophets predicted that the kingdom of Israel-and so, the kingdom of God-would be restored by a righteous descendent of David (cf. Jer. 23:5).

Kingdom by Covenant
The righteous king, the Son of David, the King of Kings would be Jesus Christ. The first words of the New Testament establish Jesus’ royal pedigree: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David" (Mt. 1:1). Many times He is addressed as "Son of David," even though most Jews considered David’s line to be extinct for centuries.

The evangelists are careful to depict Jesus’ Davidic royalty, even from His earliest days. He is born in the city of King David. He is often shown "with Mary his mother" (Mt. 2:11), just as the ancient king of Israel always ruled, not with his (multiple) wives, but beside his mother, the Gebirah, or Queen Mother.

Thus, the reign of God is not merely His governance over creation. God has always governed the universe, which He created and continues to hold in existence.

No, the kingdom of God refers, rather, to a specific historical reality: the reign that God established by covenant with David, and which He renewed through Jesus Christ. With the coming of Jesus, "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mt. 3:2). The kingdom of heaven has come to earth. Some people recognized this. Nathaniel proclaimed Jesus’ divine and Davidic kingship upon first meeting Him: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (Jn. 1:49).

Christian tradition goes so far as to identify the kingdom with Jesus Himself (cf. Catechism, no. 2816). This, however, raises a difficulty: If the kingdom has come with Jesus Christ, why did Jesus Himself teach us to pray for the coming of the kingdom? Why should we pray "Thy kingdom come"?

Jesus taught His disciples to pray for the kingdom because, even though the King has come among us, He has not yet manifested Himself fully. Even in Jesus’ lifetime, most people did not see His kingship. He did not match their worldly idea of a king. Remember, the Israelites had first wanted a king because they envied the gentiles, whose kings were symbols of power. Pontius Pilate used Jesus’ un-kingliness as the basis for his interrogation. "My kingship," Jesus replied, "is not of this world" (Jn. 18:36).

His kingdom has entered the world. It is here. Yet it is not fully manifest. It is present invisibly and veiled sacramentally. In that sense, it is like Jesus Himself, who possessed all the glory of God, though He revealed this glory through humble, human flesh.

The Royal Road
Jesus promised us a kingdom, and He kept His promise. When His Father raised Him from the dead, He established through His own resurrected body, which is the Eucharist, His mystical body, which is the kingdom. He said, "The kingdom is near!" And so it is-it is as near as our local parish. For where the king is present, there is the kingdom. And where the Eucharist is, there is the King.

"The kingdom of God has been coming since the Last Supper," says the Catechism, "and, in the Eucharist, it is in our midst" (Catechism, no. 2816). That’s why we pray the Our Father at the climactic moment in the Mass, just before we receive Jesus in Holy Communion. "In the Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer . . . is the proper prayer of ‘the end-time,’ the time of salvation that began with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and will be fulfilled with the Lord’s return" (Catechism, no. 2771).

The kingdom is here, and the King is among us. He is here in all His glory, and He reigns in mystery, in the Eucharist, in the Church. St. Augustine put it plainly: "The present Church is the kingdom of God." Even now, in the Church, Christ rules in all His glory, though we lack the vision to see such glory in its fullness. We walk by faith, for now; but later, God willing, we will walk by sight.

When we pray "Thy kingdom come," we ask for an ever-increasing manifestation of the glory of Jesus’ real presence. The kingdom has come to us, in the past, in the Incarnation; in the present, in the Eucharist; and it will come to us in fullness in the future, in the unveiling of divine glory at Christ’s second coming.

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