Our Mission Series, The Coming of Jesus is the Good News of Joy and Hope/Chapter 1: Christ-Proclaimed Kingdom of God

Chapter 1: Christ-Proclaimed Kingdom of God On Earth

(Balik Sa Panginoon: Turn Our Ways Back to the Lord)

Balik Sa Panginoon (Back With God)

Luke 4:16-21

Jesus went back to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as usual he went to the meeting place on the Sabbath. When he stood up to read from the Scriptures, he was given the book of Isaiah the prophet. He opened it and read,

"The Lord's Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers, and to say, THIS IS THE YEAR THE LORD HAS CHOSEN."

Jesus closed the book, then handed it back to the man in charge and sat down. Everyone in the meeting place looked straight at Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, "What you have just heard me read has come true today."

A PROLOGUE TO CHAPTER ONE

  Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand!

From Isaiah 40:35, is said, “A voice cries out in the wilderness”, in the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight a highway for God!”

 Then, indeed, from the desert, where John the Son of Zechariah, and born in the old age of Zechariah and Elizabeth, lived in the desert from herbs and honey, alone and under the elements of the desert, e.g. from the heat of the sun and by the wild animals around him, but out of the desert he came out, and proclaimed to the people: “The Kingdom of God”, rather, the King who is of God, “is at hand.  To repeat, John shouted to the people that the Kingdom of God was at hand, the King was at hand.  And so as “He” has now come, John told the people, “Repent and be baptized!”  He told them to prepare to welcome the King who was to wash out their sins, who was to make the people’s hearts ready to receive the Holy One.  He even said, “I am not worthy to untie the sandals of His feet.”  He forewarned the people that he himself was definitely not “The Christ”, the awaited Messiah, the awaited King of the Jews; but that he was sent before Him to baptize the people in water: to tell and ask the people to accept and rid themselves of their ways of sins while they were now being baptized and becoming cleansed by Him by the Spirit.  When Jesus came walking toward John, he declared, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”  Then about Jesus he further testified: “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from the sky, and remain upon Him.  And the One, who sent me to baptize with water told me: “On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, He is the One, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.  Then moreover he said, “ Now I have seen and testify that He is the Son of God!”

Chapter 1: Christ-Proclaimed Kingdom of God on Earth,

"Joy to the World, the Savior Has Come!"

Joy to the World! The Lord is come! Happy is the world because God has come down to earth, not just to pass through the earth, where mankind lives but to become one with and among men.    God has come to establish his Kingdom within and among men.  With the Son of God becoming man, and with men actually through the Son becoming adopted as "sons" with the Son, human history get super-elevated to this highest realm previously shut off to man because of original sin, because of the sin of man's first parents. The privilege given man during creation was his being created the special creature above all creatures on earth.  But per the Paschal Mystery of Christ's dying and rising for man, men even become adopted children of God. Men of God have become closest to God; maybe closer than the regular angels.  For doesn't man enjoy the privilege of receiving the Body and Blood, and the entire personality of the Son of God in the Eucharist?  This is the mystery about God's people on earth; this is the mystery about Christ's Mystical body -- the Church.  But before we proceed here and even make sense and understand this revealed mystery about the Church of God, the Church of Christ, it is necessary that first we get hold of some understanding of the greater mystery, namely and firstly -- the Mystery of Christ, about whose coming down upon man we initially expressed rejoicing that He has come to be with us, and for us. 

On these last days God has spoken to us through His Son.." who perfected all the previous revelation by ... fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and of manifesting of himself ... through his words and deeds,,,, through his signs and wonders,... but especially through his death and glorious resurrection from the dead, ... and through the final sending of Jesus' Spirit of truth" for every man to believe, embrace, and to be united with.  (RH Class Lecture, Wk 4, Peter  ...)

This is, then, the Good News of Jesus Christ: the truth and the reality of Incarnation, which in essence is the fullest revealing of God in the Person of his Son, Jesus Christ; as this has been the will of God: that he and his loving essence be revealed to man by and through his Son, whom, as conceived by the Holy Spirit, he sent down from heaven to earth by and within the Holy Trinity's mystery of the Incarnation for and Redemption of all of mankind through all generations until the End-Time upon Christ's final return in culmination of his work of salvation.  "God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him shall have eternal life".  And so, Jesus, the Son of God has become anointed by both the Father and the Holy Spirit in his becoming a Son of Man even as he remains, and -- by divine essence, & destiny -- fulfills being the Son of God, namely as he does only the will of his Father.  Thus, this purpose of his coming he repeatedly spoke to his disciples: "I came not to do my will but the will of my Father." (John 8:46-50)  

But prior to the task of understanding the event of the God-made man's reign of the world is the taller order of, beforehand, getting an understanding by faith of and about the God, who has both created and willed for himself man's existence and purpose of existence.

The Mystery of God, the Mystery of the "I Am Who Am!"  

From all eternity God initiated to call a people he was to let known to be his own People; and upon forming a covenant with them, acted with special favors for their behalf as he let it known they were his chosen people.  By way of Moses as intermediary and God appointed leader, who, then, relayed to God the Israelites' asking for His name, as a 'burning bush' God revealed himself to them as the "I Am Who Am!" (Ex. 3:14)   Thus, he became known to the Israelites as Yahweh, the noun word for the "I am who am", or the word equivalent which means a Being who is infinite and absolute in his existence or being.  Hence, he became the 'Yahweh' to the Israelites.  From the start, thus, God already took the initiative of making known his eternal desire to want man for Himself.  He created man for this purpose when he gave Adam and Eve the life of sanctifying grace or God's divine life shared by Adam and Eve before their 'fall'.  As then Adam and Eve possessed the supernatural, i.e. divine, endowments never to get sick nor to die, and most specially the privilege of being in union or friendship with God, whereby Adam and Eve enjoyed the peace of or with God and within themselves.   (All of which 'pre-fall' gifts they forfeited permanently upon their having fallen away from God.)  Yet God has not completely abandoned them or mankind, which inherited the effects of Adam & Eve's fall from God's grace.  Dei Verbum proclaims, "After the fall God's promise of salvation aroused the hope of being saved through the patriarchs, and after them through Moses and the prophets."  (DV 3)  Thus, beginning from his promise to Eve of a predestined victory and conquest over evil by a God-Anointed Son of a prefigured and pure second Eve: the proto-evangelion, (Genesis 3:15) God then called and gathered to himself through Moses the chosen people, the Jewish people.  As his chosen people, whose cry for deliverance from their slavery to the Egyptians has reached to the high heavens, God, through Moses, delivered them out of Egypt into their Promised Land, where they could worship Him, who is their God.  Between God and the Israelites was, thus, forged his Covenant with his chosen people.  "I am their God; and they are my people", were the words of Yahweh to the Israelites. (Deut. 7:6)  Hence, was proclaimed the Decalogue: the Ten Commandments of God for the Israelites.  Chief of these commandments was that the Israelites were to worship Yahweh with their whole heart, mind, soul, and body; and that they shall not have any other gods before Him.  (Deut. 6:5)  Yet by similar count, like Adam and Eve, the Jewish People turned their backs to God.  Like Adam and Eve, the Jews broke God's special predilection.  Yet in the fullness of time within and according to Divine predestination, and because of God's infinite benevolence and forbearing love, notwithstanding repeated betrayal by the Israelites of God's reaching out to them through "the Patriarchs, Moses, & the prophets", God, finally, sent His only begotten Son.  His first mission was, once and for all, to bring back to the Father, the lost Jewish People.  But this time, too, the heavenly Father now revealed himself, appropriately, being the God not only of the Jewish People, but universally of all people of all races, and of all generations.  He now legitimately proclaims himself, who created man, the God of all mankind.  His covenant with the Jewish people was actually the precursor to his intended greater covenant, now, with all human beings that He has created.  His covenant with the Israelites was a prefigurement of his New Covenant with ALL who have descended from Adam and Eve, namely all of mankind.  Then, their having all been borne ultimately from Adam & eve, the very first parents of the entire human race --, they, along with the Jews, thus, had also become inheritors of the curse of original sin.  And as God had promised of a new Eve in place of the Old Eve; so that all the children of this new Eve, both the Jews and all the Gentiles, are restored back through her Son, who was the Son of God, to the destined re-union of all of mankind with God.  Hence, our rejoicing up top our treatment here of this topic about Christ, and about the Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit re: the Triune God's special eternally planned loving and saving of mankind, of all of mankind: both the Jews early on, and the entire human race of the whole world through all generations.

Now, in proclaiming the Kingdom of God on earth, it is of prime importance that it be made known first off that Christ's establishing of his Kingdom is predicated on the fulfilling by, in, and through Himself the eternal will of the Father to set the prime reason for Jesus' coming down from the Father to mankind.  Fundamentally, thus, it is essential that we early on touch on Revelation's integrated meaning of Christ's Incarnation, Redemption, and eventual 2nd Coming in the light of Christ's being the Son of God, begotten, sent, and anointed by God the Father to become the Son of Man by the working of the Holy Spirit with the instrumentality of a pre-destined woman, Mother of this Son of God.  (Also, now, why are redemption, incarnation, and the parousia indispensable aspects of the mystery that is Christ?)  Ray Helgeson, Final question pertaining to our Chapter One topic.    

(Redemption, Incarnation, Parousia, indispensable aspects of Christ’s Mystery)

What is the mystery of Christ?  Or, “who do they say, ‘I am’?”  Peter, the would be head of Christ’s followers, declared as inspired by God, “You are the Son of the living God, the Christ!”  First off, we are asked to believe that this Jesus was from God, was God.  But as Jesus, identified by Peter to be God, was there before or among the disciples live in person, communicating with them in fellowship like any other man, a living physical person; he surely was revealing himself both God and man.  And he confirmed this by telling all he and God the Father are one, and also how he exists way before Abraham existed.  The witnesses testified about his kind of person, of his teachings, and of all his works, specially his deeds of miracles, including the raising of the dead, Lazarus, to life.  On top of these, the Father, Himself confirmed this when He said during Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 4:17) Then on the Transfiguration Mountain, the Father again confirmed Jesus when He commanded Jesus disciples, “Listen to him!” (Luke 9:35) 

What is Christ’s purpose as God-Man?  He said, "I came to do the will of my Father". (John 8:46-50)  What was the will of the Father?  To fulfill his proto-evangelion promise that He has not abandoned the sinned human race, that He has willed most importantly precisely through the Son, whom He sent down, to save them from their sins, and to bring them back the divine life they lost: their union with God.  For God chose to reveal himself, "... and to make known to us the hidden purpose of his will... (So that)... man might have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature".  From John 17:3, the Gospel states: "Father ... this is eternal life that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

How did the Father figure to realize all these?  Through Jesus, his only begotten Son, thus, the God-man, specifically through Jesus’ Paschal Mystery events: passion, death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, men are to be saved, to be forgiven of their sins, to be healed of all their infirmities – both human & spiritual, and to enjoy their restored union with God, beginning with the life in sanctifying grace on earth up to both their heavenly reward, and their eschatological resurrection, body and soul in the End-Times for the glorification of all of God’s Truth, Justice, and Perfection.

How are all the above to be understood to be most justifiably and believably real with respect to the reality of man's salvation?  They are real precisely because of Jesus’ one being as God-Man, because of his having two natures within his one Person.  As God out of his Divine Essence, he naturally emits and shares supernatural life to sanctified human beings who are in communion with him. And as man, he is in complete unity with such sanctified men by his compassionate grace. Hence, precisely as God-man, he is both able by himself to heal them of their human imperfections and by essential human solidarity assume within himself men’s humanity.  This is how Jesus Christ is the only ONE MEDIATOR of sinful men to the Holy God.  For Jesus told his disciples, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me". (John 14:5)

After having presented the foundational aspect of the announcement or proclamation of the Good News of Christ, which consists in God the Son's coming down to bring back to the Father mankind or his people on earth that were long separated from Him, we could move on now to the purpose aspect of his coming, namely the proclamation of the kingdom of heaven on earth, or the founding and institutionalization of this ecclesial community of the people of God, which is called the Church, by this Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. 

(Break here  ...)

What, then, is this Mystery, the Church, what is this Kingdom of God established by Christ on earth?

To begin with, what is the Church? How did it originate? Exactly what is its essence; or what constitutes its life? The Catechism of the Catholic Church, as stated in the referred to pages below, point out the obvious: the Church like any aggregate of people is an organization of people of religion. We could add another obvious element here: it’s a (society with very imperfect members, albeit sinful members. In addition, we could likewise easily relegate perception of the Church in terms of its hierarchical organization, or in terms of its many meeting or fellowship venue edifices. But the Catechism and the teachings of the Church on the Church tell us there is more to the ‘Church’ than these physical or earthly appearances of the Church.

In the first place, the idea and the plan of the Church began ‘in the heart of the Father’. (CCC Par. 759)  Initially when he created men, he had in all eternity, the will to have a gathering of people he could call his own people. The Israelites were his first chosen people. But upon his Son’s work of Incarnation and Redemption of the entire universal and generational race of sinful people, he had envisioned a new people under a new covenant, the community of believers in the Savior He sent them, his Son, Jesus the Anointed One.

Now, Jesus – the Father’s sent Savior of mankind, set himself this work and mission of gathering this New People of God.

He began with the forming of his 12 Apostles, then along with continuing to initially gather back the Jewish people to believe in him, Jesus, during his Public life of ministry, during the Last Supper & on his other post-resurrection appearances to his Apostles, up to the moment of the day of his Ascension to heaven, he preached about the beginning of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, namely the reign of Christ within the hearts of all who believe. During the same time he inaugurated the Church, which is to subsist in the Catholic Church under the Apostles’ successors, the Roman Pontiffs. This Church, thus, he set up, whereby it is to continue to announce the Good News of Jesus, to continue to bear witness to the faith, to continue to make present the reality of Christ’s announced Kingdom of God on earth, and to continue to spread the mystery of the Communion in the Holy Trinity. The Lumen Gentium says the Church is to carry out the Father’s plan for the Church for which the Father sent the Son: to rise up men to share in His own divine life.

Thus, it shall be incumbent upon the Church that Church members be founded upon the life-giving truth and reality of the Holy Trinity. It shall live on the love of the Father, the very life of Christ, i.e. life of sanctifying grace, and with the inner presence & help of the Holy Spirit. Constituted by Christ’s graces into one people united with God and with one another, this community of the New People of God is to become the Mystical Body of Christ, animated and kept freshly young by the Holy Spirit, which is to be its ‘soul’ and principle of unity.

And so this is the basis of the truth and being of the Church: the re-establishing of God's Covenant between God and his New People in his Son, Jesus Christ.  By the believers' faith in Jesus Christ, i.e. by their embrace of Christ's paschal mystery of passion, death, resurrection, ascension back into heaven by the right hand of the Father, andhis eventual & culminating return in Judgment Time, they get to be by grace and by adoption 'sons' with the Father per the Son ship of His Son, Jesus Christ and heirs of the Father's Kingdom. (CCC Par. 444)   In other words, whereas after the fall of their earthly father, Adam, and after generations of 'spiritual death', through the Son of God believing men and women get to receive their 'new life' of the Spirit in Christ, and thus, by his grace, become adopted "children of God".  These are the same People of God, who have arisen as the 'new people of God', and who identify with the Church established by Christ on earth.  In our later chapters on this mission series of this Balik Sa Panginoon -- (Back to the Lord) -- Site we elaborate about the nature, essence, founding, and growth of the Church.  On this early stage of our mission series we endeavor to show the fundamental connection between the whole mystery of Christ and the mystical mystery called the Church.  Altogether, our aim to present Christ's announcement and proclamation of his Kingdom of heaven on earth essentially belong and inescapably integrate the two mysteries and realities of Christ, the Son of God-Son of Man, and of the Church, which he founded and which he continues to sustain through man's journey on earth up to its eschatological culmination in the final communion of the Saints with Christ upon his 2nd Coming in the End-Times.

Thus, when Christ redeemed the world He created the beginning of the new earth. From sinful men and women the Saints have been made holy, i.e. sanctified and purified by Christ's sacrificial life, death and resurrection. With Christ as the Head the pioneer holy ones, the Saints, together   with the Angels of Heaven became the milestone beginning of the Church, the body of Christ, the start of the Kingdom of God on earth. Exactly, therefore, those previously men and women of sins were changed into men and women of virtues through Christ's graces, and made possible Christ's founding of the Kingdom of God on earth.

But in order for this Kingdom to flourish, for the Church to grow more generations of mankind within time and history until judgment day must believe and follow Christ. Mankind shall have to continue to accept memberships by conversion and grace with the Church of Jesus Christ.

And Christ taught and showed the way how to grow His Church. Foremost of the way was for men to deny themselves, take up their crosses daily, and follow Him all the way to the point of uniting with Christ by dying and living with Him sacrificially. In Calvary the Lord broke his body and shed his blood to atone God's justice while at the same time he produced "Heavenly Manna", (The Eucharist), to feed and revive the Saints into His New Life, the Life of Grace. Likewise, the Saints, e.g. the Apostles and the first martyred Christians received of the Divine nourishment by their "communal breaking of the bread"/the Eucharistic celebrations, and at the same time offered themselves up by their martyrdom-like sacrificing of their lives as oblations united with Christ. They serve as the first fruits of Christ's Church, and constituted the first memberships in the beginning Kingdom of God. Together Christ and these initial citizens of the Kingdom of God become parts of the atonement to the Father; and have become bearers of the graces from the Holy Spirit so the Church may continue to build, grow, and last non-stop.

(Break here...)

Jesus Christ, the bread of life for the Church.

So that Yahweh’s chosen people get to survive living in the desert, he gave them manna from heaven. In these culminating times, with the coming to the world of the Son of God, God's New People, as they journey in the 'desert' of life, receive the true and real food and sustenance for their restored and new divine life: the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of this Son of God turned Son of Man.  And so, indeed, joy to the world again and again because even after Jesus went up to heaven, his natural repose and throne, he makes himself present again and again to every man and woman who unites with him by way of the loving embrace of or in the communion with the Eucharist.

John 6:53-54 "states  ...unless you eat the flesh & drink the blood of the Son  ...you won’t live." In the Eucharist, i.e. communion with the body and blood of Christ, Jesus was again being very unequivocal and real. He said unless we really and actually eat of his flesh and drink of his blood we shall not have his life everlasting. Jesus as a man understands the physicality of love consummation. Union between two lovers involves personal physical union. Similarly most knowing of the act of human union, the God-man, Jesus desires and demands that we actually unite with him completely personally in a physical and divine manner. And by the mysterious power of his words transforming the bread and the wine into his very body and blood he made it possible for him to become part of us when we receive the Eucharist, i.e. by Holy Communion. John 6:56 "If you eat my flesh and drink my blood you are ONE WITH ME, and I am ONE WITH YOU."

This is the testimony of Jesus' real presence on earth with us after He has left us. This fact affords all men great opportunities of really being united with Christ right here on earth before the eternal heaven bliss with God! This is Heaven on earth! Through the most elevated manner of interpersonal love union, in the Eucharist every communicant becomes one with the Divine Reality. And as each one becomes one with Christ, each together with Christ becomes one with all others as one body with Christ. This characterizes the unitive aspect of the faithful through the Eucharist. With the act of receiving communion every human being is in a state of heaven. This is the form par excellence of God's Kingdom amidst this sinful and imperfect world. The communities of earthly believers of each generation are embodied precisely as communities by the devotion to and reception of the body and blood of Christ. They comprise God's Kingdom in time and space. These Eucharistically devoted believing churches are the Kingdom of God within the world. It is the Kingdom opposed and super interposed against the Kingdom of this world. . Such communities of every generation and of every nation front themselves as the New Cities of God in the world. Saint Augustine introduced the concept of the divided city, or the concept of two cities, The City of this World versus The City of God, or The Kingdom of the World against The Kingdom of God on earth.  (This continues over to the full treatment on the Eucharist...)

(Break here ......) 

ANOTHER WAY THE HOLY SPIRIT INCORPORATES/UNITES OTHER BELIEVERS INTO GOD'S EMBRACE

Some members-citizens of the City of God are those, who although sharing the Christian mark of baptism into the fold of God's faithful on earth yet have not begun to enjoy the unitive experience of relationship with the God-Emmanuel. There are our brothers and sisters in the Christian faith who have not received the gift of the Eucharist. They have, however, been incorporated into membership in the City of God community via their illuminative "union" or contemplation of the truthfulness of God. They fully appreciate the "knowledge" aspect of the God made man. They manifest their discipleship to Christ by their proclamation of the Lord as the Word come down from the Father. They, indeed, recognize in Jesus the image and the nature of the God-head come down to earth. They accept Jesus as the revelation of the Transcendent God of Heaven. Somehow they acknowledge in his person the love of the Father for mankind. But their expression of a welcome and acceptance of the faith consist more in terms of the fullest rationalistic understanding and testimony to the Divine truths of the faith. Their witness to God consists in proclaiming God's teachings. Their particularly absolute belief in the Bible is the fundamental basis of their faith. God's revelation is the spoken words of God as they believe to be found only in the Bible. Their zeal for God, however, is demonstrated by their zeal for the words of God.

From both the unitive and illuminative characteristics of this City of God radiate and emanate explosions of God's graces amidst these holy men and women of the world. They are indeed an unmistakable presence of God in the world. They are the light of the world; they are the salt of the earth. They conquer the world's darkness of ignorance and misunderstanding. They preserve the world's vestiges of sanity, and unity, and progress.

But nowhere are the explosions of these Eucharistic graces manifested as in the devoted loving family sub-communities of such City of God. The reality of the existence of God's love is exactly demonstrated proof positive by every faithful, fervent, and productive union between a husband and a wife blessed in sacred matrimony by God, by the Church. Intrinsically between the loving couple is the Spirit power of oneness and self-giving that bears all kinds of fruit including physical offspring and many spiritual offspring within and around the couple's immediate family, clan, and relations, whether by blood or by friendship or by political affinities, e.g. their immediate village or town, nationally or even globally. Here’s thus, one manifestation of one real explosion of graces.

Through the illuminative gifts of the members of the City of God, these Christian communities of God enjoy the vital help and support of guidance and intellectual strength derived from the devotedness and fidelity to the words of God. But with the unitive characteristic of the City of God, this Kingdom of God on earth, or its communities of believers are anchored in the very foundation of the total Person of Christ: the Word himself in his very body and blood, and Divinity.

Unitively and illuminatively, all members of the City of God, also called pilgrims on the way to Heaven, mark themselves out as the holy people of God distinct and separate from the people of the world or the City of the World.

Some attention to the basic community unit within the larger community aggregate the Church: the human family. 

The Christian families, whether blessed unitively or illuminatively, or both are the marginal units of the City of God. Pope John Paul II writes: "In our times, it is essential to deepen everyone's personal commitment to helping enrich this primary and vital cell of society. It should not be forgotten, in the general planning of ecclesial activities, that the family is the first and principal path of the Church. Awareness of its central value for evangelization must imbue the whole structure of diocesan pastoral care_... Familiaris consortio (the Pope's encyclical on the family) insists most particularly on the rights of the family for which it is as it were a Magna Charta."

The Christian families please God for heeding His admonition to use the family as the initial springboard to glorify God. Christian families become the building blocks of the greater communities of believers and children of God. As families they insure the beginning of the faith in their children. As families together forming larger communities with other families they insure to safeguard the faith passed on from ancestors through generations; and thus insures the continuity and unity among the people of God in pilgrimage.

Pope John Paul II stated: "As everyone knows, wherever the Church has been unable to carry out her usual work of evangelization, it has frequently been families that have preserved and maintained the faith, passing it on to the new generations. This function proper to the family as the first teacher of its new members expresses the true vocation and mission of Christian parents, whose primary responsibility involves their children's human and religious formation."

But precisely because of the unitive or illuminative gifts of these communities of believing Christian families, namely its gifts of love and understanding, pardon and personal repentance for sins, unity and community building, selflessness and mutual generosities through the graces of the Holy Spirit the survival and prevalence of the City of God among men is ascertained. Through each and all member families of the communities under the City of God the reign of God's peace is made real.  But at its most base identification, this kingdom of God rests upon every single heart and soul that is in accord with the will of the heavenly Father.  This kingdom of God on earth is the body of souls or the body of hearts which receives the gift of peace endowed upon individuals of good will in every corner of the world at every moment of time as inspired, blessed, and sustained by the Holy Spirit of Christ.

And so while we anchor the life of this Kingdom of God on Christ's Eucharistic & Paschal reality, and while we assert universal incorporating among believers per the Word revelation in Jesus himself and his truth teachings, as typified in the total Catholic memberships of all believers beginning from the human race base of the domestic families, we recapitulate the summed-up characterization of the Kingdom People of God the way we recapitulated who fit the Lord's standard of holiness, accordingly as defined in that Chapter on the Kingdom of God as ultimately characterized by the holiness of this Body of Christ, the Church. 

A recapping on the chapter:

Like we state there, we are saying we can and shall arrive as God's people if we obey God’s commandment for us according as most meaningfully fulfilled on us, God's human creatures per our following the path revealed & taught, shown & demonstrated, and enabled for us by our Lord Jesus Christ through the grace from the Holy Spirit. It consists, thus, in our faithfully uniting and abiding by him, who is our Way, Truth, and Life. Through moments of weakness & struggles, tests & temptations, doubts & lapses of our free will, in other words in moments of real and humanly insurmountable life crosses the following should be our Christian mind-set. We are to ever remind ourselves in real leap of faith initially to accept the crosses sent our way as our loving sacrificial atonement to the Father through and with Christ. We are to ever watch ourselves in sleep and in waking moments against the lurking lions/demons out there to devour our faith & trust in God and against these evil spirits’ overwhelming deceptions & lies that would confound us away from fidelity to God’s truths. And finally we are never ever to allow us to be swindled at jeopardizing or risking our new life of grace, the life which is love or service oriented, so preciously gained for us by the blood and wounds of the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

And with this Kingdom of Christ set up on the hill as a beacon light, and steadfastly serving against all evil influences & deceptions as the preserving salt of the earth, its destiny, thus, is to make manifest by faith this power of grace as successfully working in the midst of the world and worldliness in a manner incognito, hidden, quite invisible, or unseen. Altogether this is being made to happen most powerfully and victoriously through Christ and the Spirit. 

Our final repeat last word: Christians have the mind-set that tasks and even plain need will many times be beyond them but never beyond God's providence. For Jesus has already offered himself as our 'yoke-full panacea' and more in everything according to the Divine plan of God. Ever mark St Paul's words: when we're truly weak we are always made strong in Jesus Christ through the Spirit. So did/do testify the Saints. 

We should and could always begin to state with total conviction and excitement that since the Coming of the Savior Jesus Christ and because of his coming there have always been the un-encompassing and incomprehensible explosions of his graces by the Spirit. The scope of these marvels from the standpoint of Christ will only be fully made known during his Second Coming at the Day of Judgment. But the manifestations and perceptions of the present glorious working of grace could already confound us here and now through bits and pieces, as well as through great outpouring on occasions in the lives of the saints on earth of the past and of the present.

But, talking of and about grace, that we are unceasingly prayerfully plugged to the Spirit of the Lord, most humbly and obediently manifest precisely by grace the reality of God’s presence, i.e. his non-stop intervention for, and deliverance of each of us, individual men or women, who fully trust in God.  By this is made present through Christ the Kingdom of God in the People of God from generation through generations until the end of the world when the Lord shall have come back once and for all.

The easiest and the simplest perception of, and a way of experiencing God's Kingdom with us is by way of our uniting with the Holy Family beginning on Christmas Day up to every single day of the year until the next Christmas.  We do so primarily per often reception of the Baby Jesus in the Eucharist, per daily Rosary, per frequent ejaculation prayer, St. Joseph protect our families, and per our prayers assisted effortful living of our faith within our own families.  Having done so, our larger and more complicated witnessing of the faith to the whole world within the Church will come by so much more realizable and ever full of hope. 

We shall treat of its contrasting Kingdom or World: The Kingdom of the World, The City of the World.