This Is How It Is With the Kingdom of God – Part 2

By Fr. Christopher Foeckler, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

On the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time this year, as we saw in last month’s update article, the Church offered the two early parables of the Lord to describe “how it is with the kingdom of God” in this world. In the same Mass it also provides us with Psalm 92 and St. Paul’s teaching on the particular judgement. By these two readings we are offered an important perspective on the working of the Church – that although, like an ungainly shrub or field of wheat and weeds, its members “planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish … like a cedar of Lebanon … in the courts of our God” (cf Ps 92). The Church makes its members strong and fruitful if they are planted in the courts of the Lord, that is, if they abide in the Lord through the sacramental life offered by the Church. Then they can live a life pleasing to the Lord while in the body as St. Paul comments.

While there are fruitful members of the Church abiding in the Lord, it is undeniable that there are those who are like weeds and do not abide and are not living a life pleasing to the Lord. From thence comes all the scandal and confusion. We pray that God have mercy on them as much as we hope He has mercy on us and that all are converted and remain in the Lord, “for we will all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense, according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil.” (2 Cor 5:10)

So, in the face of the criticism of the Church from outside it or within it, we must recognize first that the Catholic Church is indeed the kingdom of God on earth “in mystery” and has life and grows by the power of God. Secondly, while it can and does sanctify its members by the Virtues of Christ its Head, it depends on the individual member to do good and avoid evil. That it embraces the wheat and the weeds within itself, the Church, like the mustard shrub, is messy and does not look like you would hope (or thought?)
it would.

And then we celebrate as a Church the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption and contemplate the immaculate holiness of the Church’s “preeminent member” and are reminded of the cedars of Lebanon flourishing in the courts of the Lord and take hope!

Happy Feast of the Assumption!

When we reflect on the diminutive nature of the Lord’s imagery of the kingdom of God in the world, another parable should come to mind – that of the field of wheat and weeds growing up together until harvest time. This image is most appropriate for accounting for the problems and scandal that plague the kingdom of God on earth in the Church. And so there must be another step in understanding the nature of the Church which we will explain in next month’s update article.