Catechism of the Council of Trent: "Thy kingdom come"
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The Second Petition of the Lord's Prayer: "Thy Kingdom Come"
Importance Of Instruction On This Petition
The kingdom of heaven which we pray for in this second Petition is the great end to which is referred, and in which terminates all the preaching of the Gospel; for from it St. John the Baptist commenced his exhortation to penance: Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. With it also the Saviour of the world opened His preaching. In that admirable discourse on the mount in which He points out to His disciples the way to happiness, having proposed, as it were, the subject-matter of His discourse, our Lord commences with the kingdom of heaven: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Again, to those who would detain Him with them, He assigns as the necessary cause of His departure: To other cities, also, I must preach the kingdom of God; therefore am I sent. This kingdom He afterwards commanded the Apostles to preach. And to him who expressed a wish to go and bury his father, He replied: Go thou, and preach the kingdom of God. And after He had risen from the dead, during those forty days in which He appeared to the Apostles, He spoke of the kingdom of God.
This second Petition, therefore, the pastor should treat with the greatest attention, in order to impress on the minds of his faithful hearers its great importance and necessity.
Greatness Of This Petition
In the first place pastors will be greatly assisted towards an accurate and careful explanation of this Petition by the thought that (the Redeemer Himself) commanded this Petition, although united to the others, to be also offered separately, in order that we may seek with the greatest earnestness that for which we pray; for He says: Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.
So great and so abundant are the heavenly gifts contained in this Petition, that it includes all things necessary for the security of soul and body. The king who pays no attention to those things on which depends the safety of his kingdom we should deem unworthy of the name. If a man is so anxious for the welfare of his kingdom, what must be the solicitude, what the providential care, with which the King of kings guards the life and safety of man?
We compress, therefore, within the small compass of this Petition for God's kingdom all that we stand in need of in our present pilgrimage, or rather exile, and all this God graciously promises to grant us; for He immediately subjoins: All these things shall be added unto you. Thus does He declare that He is that king who with bountiful hand bestows upon man an abundance of all things, whose infinite goodness enraptured David when he sang: The Lord ruleth me, and I shall want nothing.
Necessity Of Rightly Making This Petition
It is not enough, however, that we utter an earnest petition for the kingdom of God; we must also add to our prayer the use of all those means by which that kingdom is sought and found. The five foolish virgins uttered earnestly the same petition in these words: Lord, Lord, open to us; but they used not the means necessary to secure its attainment, and were therefore rightly excluded. For God Himself has said: Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Motives For Adopting The Necessary Means
The priest, therefore, who is charged with the care of souls, should draw from the exhaustless fountain of the divine Scriptures those powerful motives which are calculated to move the faithful to the desire and pursuit of the kingdom of heaven, which portray in vivid coloring our deplorable condition, and which should make so sensible an impression upon them that, entering into themselves, they may call to mind that supreme happiness and those unutterable goods with which the eternal abode of God our Father abounds.
Here below we are exiles, inhabitants of a land in which dwell those demons whose hatred for us cannot be softened, who are the determined and implacable foes of mankind. What shall we say of those intestine conflicts and domestic battles in which the soul and the body, the flesh and the spirit, are continually engaged against each other, in which we have always to fear defeat, nay, in which instant defeat becomes inevitable, unless we be defended by the protecting hand of God? Feeling this weight of misery the Apostle exclaims: Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
The misery of our condition, it is true, strikes us at once of itself; but if contrasted with that of other creatures, it strikes us still more forcibly. Although irrational and even inanimate, the lower creatures are seldom seen so to depart from the acts, the instincts and the movements imparted to them by nature, as to fail of obtaining their appointed and determined end. This is so obvious in the case of beasts, fishes and birds that there is no need to dwell on it. But if we look to the heavens, do we not behold the verification of these words of David? For ever, O Lord, thy word standeth firm in the heavens. Constant in their motions, uninterrupted in their revolutions, they never depart in the least from the laws divinely prescribed. The earth, too, and universal nature, as we at once perceive, adhere strictly to, or at least depart but very little from the laws of their being.
But unhappy man is guilty of frequent falls. Seldom does he carry out his good resolutions; often he abandons and despises what he has well commenced; his best purposes which pleased for a time, are often suddenly abandoned, and he plunges into designs as degrading as they are pernicious.
What then is the cause of this misery and inconstancy? Manifestly a contempt of the divine inspirations. We close our ears to the admonitions of God, our eyes to the divine lights which shine before us; nor do we hearken to those salutary commands which are delivered by our heavenly Father.
To paint to the eyes of the faithful the misery of man's condition, to detail its various causes, and to point out the efficacious remedies are, therefore, among the objects which should employ the zealous exertions of the pastor. In the discharge of this duty, his labor will be not a little lightened if he consults what has been said on the subject by those holy men, John Chrysostom and Augustine, and still more if he refers to our exposition of the Creed. For with a knowledge of these truths, who will be so obstinate in sin as not to endeavour, with the help of God's preventing grace, to rise, like the prodigal son spoken of in the Gospel, to stand erect, and hasten into the presence of his heavenly Father and king?
"Thy Kingdom"
Having pointed out the advantages to be derived by the faithful from this Petition, the pastor should next explain the favours which it seeks. This becomes the more necessary as the words, kingdom of God, have a variety of significations, the exposition of each of which will not be found without its advantages in elucidating other passages of Scripture, and is necessary to a knowledge of the present subject.
The Kingdom Of Nature
In their ordinary sense, which is frequently employed by Scripture, the words, kingdom of God, signify not only that power which God possesses over all men and over the entire universe, but, also, His providence which rules and governs all things. In his hands, says the Prophet, are all the ends of the earth. The word ends includes those things also which lie buried in the depths of the earth, and are concealed in the most hidden recesses of creation. In this sense Mardochaeus exclaims: O Lord, Lord, almighty king, for all things are in thy power, and there is none that can resist thy will: thou art God of all, and there is none that can resist thy majesty.
The Kingdom Of Grace
By the kingdom of God is also understood that special and singular providence by which God protects and watches over pious and holy men. It is of this peculiar and admirable care that David speaks when he says: The Lord rules me, I shall want nothing, and Isaias: The Lord our king he will save us.
But although, even in this life, the pious and holy are placed, in a special manner, under this kingly power of God; yet our Lord Himself informed Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world, that is to say, had not its origin in this world, which was created and is doomed to perish. In this perishable way power is exercised by kings, emperors, commonwealths, rulers, and all whose titles to the government of states and provinces is founded upon the desire or election of men, or who have intruded themselves, by violent and unjust usurpation, into sovereign power.
Not so Christ the Lord, who, as the Prophet declares, is appointed king by God, and whose kingdom, as the Apostle says, is justice: The kingdom of God's justice and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Christ our Lord reigns in us by the interior virtues of faith, hope and charity. By these virtues we are made a portion, as it were, of His kingdom, become subject in a special manner to God, and are consecrated to His worship and veneration; so that, as the Apostle could say: I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, we too are able to say: I reign, yet not I, but Christ reigneth in me.
This kingdom is called justice, because it has for its basis the justice of Christ the Lord. Of it our Lord says in St. Luke: The kingdom of God is within you. For although Jesus Christ reigns by faith in all who are within the bosom of our holy mother, the Church; yet in a special manner He reigns over those who are endowed with a superior faith, hope and charity, and have yielded themselves pure and living members to God. It is in these that the kingdom of God's grace is said to consist.