This morning…

I was meditating on the Eucharist this morning, and it occurred to me that the Passion (which is proclaimed by all Christian communities) and the Eucharist (which is not) are indelibly linked. At the Last Supper, when the Eucharist was instituted, it was surrounded by the coming sacrifice. The Sacrifice on Calvary was an offering for sin, but at one and the same time was also the Passover, which is an offering for thanksgiving. The Passion did not have a single purpose, but two. One was to pay for the sins of the world. The other was (and continues to be both in the Mass of the Western Rite and the Eastern Divine Liturgy) a sacrifice of thanksgiving. The kind of sacrifice that is to be consumed by the congregation. Without the Passion, there would be no Eucharist. Without the Eucharist, the Passion is incomplete. Without the Eucharist, the Passion is missing half of its message.

The Church as the Kingdom of Heaven

It has long been held by the Catholic Church, and summarily dismissed by many Protestants, particularly Fundamentalists, that the “Kingdom of Heaven” in the Scriptures is in reference not to the final reward in Heaven, but to the Church. The first evidence of thin is in the preaching of John the Baptist. Matthew 3:2 quotes this last of the Old Testament prophets as preaching, “Repent. for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” The key words are “at hand.” This mans that the Kingdom of Heaven was coming very quickly. It was imminent. What came was the Church, not the final judgment.

The next thing that will be addressed is the governmental structure of the Davidic Kingdom. The least that is needed for a kingdom is, well, a king. The Church has Jesus as its King. We know this because Jesus underwent the proper ceremonies to step into the role of King. To know what these ceremonies are, we must turn back to the Old Testament. When King David was growing old and dying, there was no regular succession established for Israel. Solomon had already been promised as successor, but his eldest son, Adonijah, was starting to take steps to establish himself as king while David was still alive. To solve this dilemma, David has Solomon brought to the Gihon to have him anointed, with the ceremony being conducted by Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet. Jesus too, was anointed in a river (the Jordan), and the anointing was conducted by a Priest and Prophet (John the Baptist was a prophet and of a priestly line). This establishes that Jesus was indeed the Davidic King, but to further establish this fact, Jesus installs His administration. First, Mary has an important intercessory role as Queen Mother. (This will be discussed in a later post, and in much greater detail). Jesus also gathered together twelve disciples, naming one as chief among them (Matthew 16:18-19), just as King Solomon did. It is in the twenty-second chapter of Isaiah where the role of the chief steward is most explicitly described:

“In that day I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your belt on him, and will commit your authority to his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut and none shall open.” Isa. 22:20-22

So far we have a King anointed by a prophet and priest, a Queen Mother, a ruling council of twelve, and a Chief Steward. This structure seems to fit the Catholic Church very closely. We can then say that the Davidic Kingdom is a type of the Church.

But is there more? Is there more that identifies the Kingdom of Heaven as the Church, rather than the final reward in Heaven? I am glad you asked. There most certainly is. As is commonly known, Jesus spoke often in parables. In the thirteenth chapter of the first Gospel, Jesus gives a series of parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. Of these parables there are two general types. One type relates the extreme value of the Kingdom of Heaven. The other type is more descriptive of the nature of the Kingdom. It is this second type that I would like to address.

“Another parable he put before them, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the householder came and said to him,

“Lord, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then has it weeds?” He said to them, “An enemy has done this.” The servants said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he said, “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time, I will tell the reapers ‘Gather the weeds and bind them into bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn'”‘” (Matt. 13:24-30)

And also:

“Again the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind; when it was full, men drew it ashore and sat and sorted the good into vessels and threw away the bad. So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”(Matt. 13:47-50)

The general Protestant interpretation of “the kingdom of heaven” only takes into account the eschatological reading of the passages. Only the end-times ramifications are addressed. They are not wrong in this reading insofar that at the end there will be a final judgment, and the evil will be cast into hell, and the righteous will go onto their final reward. But the bulk of these two parables are describing what is going on before the end. They are describing the Church age, where the righteous and wicked are coming up together. And this age is identified as the “kingdom of heaven.”

When all of the Scriptures are taken together, it becomes clear that the “kingdom of heaven” is none other than the Church. The Church is the restoration of the Davidic Kingdom foretold in the prophets, as it represents the return of a king or the House of David, a king whose reign will never end. He returned and established His kingdom in Jerusalem in AD 33, and He is still reigning through his earthly government, the Catholic Church.

Other articles about the Holy Eucharist:

The Holy Communion: Christian Communion Meditation

This Christmas, know more why you went to the Holy Communion every Sunday and Why you should continue to going to one. Also find out about Communion meditation.

28 Hours of Frustration

As a grad student I have had to endure my share of finals weeks. As a rule they tend to be frustrating and stressful. My most recent excursion into the madness that is finals was more so than usual. Not because of particularly difficult exams, mind you. This time around the weather reared its ugly head. That’s right, the weather. One may be inclined to ask, “How could the weather possibly add to the stress of finals?” In fact, before this semester, I would have thought the same thing. Let me explain. This semester, finals had actually gone fairly smoothly. I had taken a fairly light load to facilitate my acclimation into a new environment. I felt very confident in my performance on my finals thus far, and my only remaining final was a take-home exam which was open book, open note. Seems simple enough, right? Wrong. Enter the wind. I was happily typing away on my laptop in Assisi Heights when the high winds knocked out power. Again, I am using a laptop, so no big deal, right? There is the problem of printing my exam. So I pack up and go to the library, only to discover…the outage was campus-wide. Joy. The generators did kick on after about an hour. So all is well, right? All I have to do is go to the computer lab it print. In theory, that would be correct. The network won’t let me log on. Grumble grumble. I do find out that one of the labs in another building is functioning properly, so I pack up again and go out int the insane wind to complete my quest of printing two pages. I get to Egan and run into a friend, we chat and…darkness. The lights go out again. This is not my day!!! The lights do return after a few minutes and I go to the Mac Lab…quickly! After spending a short while trying to figure out how a Mac actually works (sue me, I’m a PC user) I do get the exam printed. I go to the JC to hang out before I actually have to turn the thing in, and it does actually get turned in on time. Now this would have been the end of my troubles had I not been living on campus. But I still needed to get my apartment cleaned so I could leave without getting fined. But by this time, it is too dark to see, and I was without flashlights. Granted this highlights two errors in my part: 1. Why do I not have a flashlight? 2. Procrastination is, for the lack of a better word, stupid. So my choices are to go back down to the JC and plug my laptop in (which is almost dead) or go to the apartment and sit in the dark. I opt for the former. I find a seat and a working outlet. No sooner do i get the thing plugged in then…you guessed it, power gone. My choices then become to sit with friends and socialize under the emergency lights or sit in my apartment. I stay and socialize. I get tired of just hanging around, so I go back to my apartment. Let me point out my brilliance here. Instead of hang around and laughing with friends, I decide a cold, unlit apartment is better. Yeah, that’s what I thought too–what an idiot! So after about ten minuites or so of being really bored, I go back down to the JC with a book I had been meaning to read (The World’s First Love by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen–I recommend it. It is amazing so far) I get to the JC, and what do I discover? They have their generator back, and my computer is back at the apartment. I am not making the walk again (Lets face it. Franciscan University is a hilly campus, and I have the physique of Fred Flintstone). Anyways, I stay there until it closes and I go back to a cold, dark apartment. No heat. No hot water. No lights. I turn my bedroom light on so that when the power comes on, it will wake me up and I can get busy cleaning. That was a stupid assumption. Not that the light would wake me up, but that I would get power back. I get up. Get some cleaning done, and then it is time for a meeting. We have a fruitful meeting, and I go back home to clean more. I then hear the power was supposed to be back by 1:00. It is now 3:00. Sigh. Anyways I had promised Kat that I would help her move a bunch of her stuff to storage since she is going to Austria next semester. By the time we get done, we have power, twenty-eight hours after it first went off. I worked until about 10 that night and then finished in the morning, took Kat to the airport, and on very little sleep (because I have a dragon living in the furnace that keeps my apartment at a comfortable 90 degrees) I make the 3 hour drive to my parent’s house. Before anyone goes on about how petty I am, I must say this. If nothing else, this ordeal made me that much more conscious of those who never have power, because they live in a box. I am truly blessed because I had a place to sleep, and enough clothing to bundle up and stay warm. It just takes a short time of doing without a little, to make you aware of those who do without a lot.