Jesus Week – Day 8

 

He is Risen… 
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus,
who will judge the living and the dead,
and by His appearing and His kingly power:
proclaim the word.
(Mk 16:2, 2 Tim 4:1-2)

 

Jesus, King

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Jesus is Lord, Liberator, Healer, Food, Friend, and Teacher. But He is also King to whom judgment of the world belongs. All of the aforementioned titles are beautiful — but they’re also meaningless unless Jesus is just, unless there is an accountability for every thought, word, and action. Otherwise, He would be a partial judge, and love and truth would be an ever shifting ideal. No, this is His world. We are His creatures. He is allowed to set the terms of not only our participation in His creation but of our communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And how beautiful His terms are:

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37-39)

This is why St. John of the Cross concluded:

At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love. —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1022; Dichos 64

So said St. Augustine, “Love, and do as you will.”^[1]Homilies on the First Epistle of John God created everything out of love, and to Love himself, everything must return. There is coming a Great Reckoning for all of humanity, a reckoning to our King who loved and died for us. Did I love Him in return?

 

Thy Kingdom Come

Before the Day of Judgment,^[2]cf. The Day of Justice however, Jesus promised that “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come.”^[3]Matthew 24:14 The ultimate witness is that His Word will be vindicated in us His Church; that the Beatitudes will be fulfilled when those who mourn will be comforted, the pure of heart shall see God, the meek will inherit the earth, and the poor and persecuted will receive the Kingdom.^[4]cf. Matt 5:3-12 This vindication will happen before the end of the world within time and history. This is what the Scriptures say,^[5]cf. The Thousand Years the Early Church Fathers explained,^[6]cf. How the Era was Lost and the Magisterium has repeatedly affirmed.^[7]cf. The Popes and the Dawning Era

The pre-eminent Scriptural affirmation is from Jesus Himself who taught us to pray:

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10)

First, this prayer teaches us that Jesus’s kingdom is synonymous with the Father’s Will. This is why He said, 

My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work… A son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees his father doing; for what he does, his son will do also…. (John 4:34, 5:19)

Here we come to the crux of why Jesus took on our human nature: to repair, or rather, resurrect in the human race the gift we once possessed in the Garden of Eden: to participate and live in the Divine Will and thus share in all of God’s divine acts.^[8]cf. True Sonship It’s the difference between possessing a flashlight, our human will, or possessing the sun, the Divine Will; between being an obedient slave who receives his due wages, or being a son and daughter who is to receive their Father’s inheritance.^[9]cf. Ephesians 1:13-14, 1 Peter 3-5 As St. Peter said:

…He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature. (2 Peter 1:4)

In every single moment that Jesus lived, He was preparing the path, the “way of love”, that would allow our human nature to participate in the divine. He was restoring within the human race the Divine Will that Adam forfeited, plunging creation into sorrow after sorrow. 

“All creation,” said St. Paul, “groans and labors up till now,” awaiting Christ’s redemptive efforts to restore the proper relationship between God and his creation. But Christ’s redemptive act did not of itself restore all things, it simply made the work of redemption possible, it began our redemption. Just as all men share in the disobedience of Adam, so all men must share in the obedience of Christ to the Father’s will. Redemption will be complete only when all men share his obedience… —Servant of God Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J., He Leadeth Me (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), pp. 116-117

This is the mystery that is unfolding at this hour, as we heard in Day 7, that Jesus is preparing for himself a Bride who will be “without spot or wrinkle… holy and without blemish.”^[10]Ephesians 5:27 That is, a Bride who is living in the Divine Will just as Christ did. Thus, Jesus said to Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta that the prayer of the “Our Father” still awaits its fulfillment:

My very prayer to the heavenly Father, ‘May it come, may your kingdom come and your Will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ meant that with My coming to earth the Kingdom of My Will was not established among creatures, otherwise I would have said, ‘My Father, may Our kingdom that I have already established on earth be confirmed, and let Our Will dominate and reign.’ Instead I said, ‘May it come.’ This means that it must come and souls must await it with the same certainty with which they awaited the future Redeemer. For My Divine Will is bound and committed to the words of the ‘Our Father.’ —Jesus to Luisa, cited in The Gift of Living in the Divine Will in the Writings of Luisa Piccarreta (Kindle Location 1551)

Put another way, He said to Luisa:

I am preparing for you an era of love… these writings will be for My Church like a new sun which will rise in her midst… as the Church will be renewed, they will transform the face of the earth… the Church will receive this celestial food, which will strengthen Her and make Her rise again in her full triumph… the generations will not end until my Will reigns upon earth. —February 8, 1921, February 10, 1924, February 22, 1921

 

The Kingdom of the Divine Will

Thus, Jesus is returning as a King to establish the Kingdom of His Divine Will — “as a witness to the nations.” We read in the Book of Revelation that after Satan, the dragon, attempts to establish his own kingdom, the kingdom of the beast or “antichrist”,^[11]cf. Rev 13 Jesus returns as a King to destroy that attempted coup and purify the earth of the wicked:

The armies of heaven followed him, mounted on white horses and wearing clean white linen. Out of his mouth came a sharp sword to strike the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod, and he himself will tread out in the wine press the wine of the fury and wrath of God the almighty. He has a name written on his cloak and on his thigh, “King of kings and Lord of lords.” (Revelation 19:14-16)

The “iron rod” is the unbending, unshakeable, unchanging eternal “Divine Will” that governs the physical and spiritual laws of creation and reflects all the divine attributes of the Holy Trinity itself.^[12]cf. The Iron Rod But look what else Scripture says:

To the victor, who keeps to My ways until the end, I will give authority over the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod… And to him I will give the morning star. (Rev 2:26-28)

Jesus gives to the faithful who persevere through that Great Tribulation the authority to rule with Him over the nations in the Divine Will. He will give to His faithful “the morning star,” which Revelation 22:16 reveals is Jesus Himself. So when we say that Jesus is returning to establish His Kingdom, we ‘re not speaking of the heresy of Millenarianism — a false expectation that Jesus will come again to physically reign on earth in a political kingdom. Rather, Jesus is returning to reign in His Church in what Pope John Paul II called “a new and divine holiness.”^[13]cf. The Coming New and Divine Holiness

The Church “is the Reign of Christ already present in mystery.” —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 763

But as St. John Eudes taught:

…the mysteries of Jesus are not yet completely perfected and fulfilled. They are complete, indeed, in the person of Jesus, but not in us, who are His members, nor in the Church, which is His mystical body. —Treatise “On the Kingdom of Jesus”, Liturgy of the Hours, Vol IV, p 559

 

The Resurrection of the Church

What is necessary is that the Church be purified through her own Passover when she will “follow her Lord in His death and Resurrection.^[14]Catechism of the Catholic Church, 677 After all the persecutions of the Antichrist:

…the wedding day of the Lamb has come, His bride has made herself ready. She was allowed to wear a bright, clean linen garment. (Rev 19:6-8)

Why does the Bride the Church have to be purified through this suffering?

Only a pure soul can boldly say: “Thy kingdom come.” One who has heard Paul say, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies,” and has purified himself in action, thought and word will say to God: “Thy kingdom come!”—Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2819

Thus, after Jesus slays the Antichrist by the breath of His mouth,^[15]2 Thess 2:8 we read of a “resurrection” of the Church when she will “reign with Christ for a thousand years.”^[16]cf. Revelation 20:4-6 He descends into His purified Bride as in a New Pentecost.^[17]cf. The Middle Coming As Early Church Father St. Justin Martyr testified:

…we understand that a period of one thousand years is indicated in symbolic language… A man among us named John, one of Christ’s Apostles, received and foretold that the followers of Christ would dwell in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and that afterwards the universal and, in short, everlasting resurrection and judgment would take place. —St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, The Fathers of the Church, Christian Heritage 

The Church Fathers referred to the “thousand years” as the “Day of the Lord.” You see, it’s not the end of the world coming but the fulfillment of the Our Father.

This is our great hope and our invocation, ‘Your Kingdom come!’ — a Kingdom of peace, justice and serenity, which will re-establish the original harmony of creation. —ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II, General Audience, November 6th, 2002, Zenit

…every day in the prayer of the Our Father we ask the Lord: “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10)…. we recognize that “heaven” is where the will of God is done, and that “earth” becomes “heaven”—i.e., the place of the presence of love, of goodness, of truth and of divine beauty — only if on earth the will of God is done. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, General Audience, February 1st, 2012, Vatican City

Again, this is an interior coming of the Kingdom of God within. As St. Bernard taught:

In his first coming Our Lord came in our flesh and in our weakness; in this middle coming He comes in spirit and power; in the final coming, He will be seen in glory and majesty… —St. Bernard, Liturgy of the Hours, Vol I, p. 169

Now, this so-called “middle coming” is clearly described by the Apostle St. John in the 19th and 20th chapter of Revelation. As Pope Benedict XVI affirmed:

Whereas people had previously spoken only of a twofold coming of Christ — once in Bethlehem and again at the end of time — Saint Bernard of Clairvaux spoke of an adventus medius, an intermediate coming, thanks to which [the Lord] periodically renews His intervention in history. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, Light of the World, p.182-183, A Conversation With Peter Seewald))

This middle coming is the fulfillment of the Our Father. Venerable Conchita describes what it means for the Father’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven”:

It is a union of the same nature as that of the union of heaven, except that in paradise the veil which conceals the Divinity disappears… —Jesus to Venerable Conchita, Ronda Chervin, Walk With Me Jesus; cited in The Crown and Completion of All Sanctities, Daniel O’Connor, p. 12

Hence, Pope Pius XI and other popes proclaimed this hope:

Here it is foretold that his kingdom will have no limits, and will be enriched with justice and peace: “in his days shall justice spring up, and abundance of peace… And he shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth”… When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony… —POPE PIUS XI, Quas Primas, n. 8, 19; Dec. 11th, 1925

It will only be a taste of Heaven, but is the final stepping stone before the consummation of all things.

 

The “signs of the times”

In closing, we ought to consider all this in light of the “signs of the times.” Jesus said that, prior to His return, there would “labor pains” — war, famines, earthquakes, and plagues from place to place.^[18]cf. Matt 24, Mark 13, etc. “Because of the increase of evildoing,” He said, “the love of many will grow cold.”^[19]Matt 24:12 Pope Paul VI admitted some 60 years ago:

I sometimes read the Gospel passage of the end times and I attest that, at this time, some signs of this end are emerging. —POPE PAUL VI, The Secret Paul VI, Jean Guitton, p. 152-153, Reference (7), p. ix.

In a vision that truly reveals the hour in which we are living, St. Faustina said:

I saw the Lord Jesus, like a king in great majesty, looking down upon our earth with great severity; but because of His Mother’s intercession, He prolonged the time of His mercy… I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart. I use punishment when they themselves force Me to do so; My hand is reluctant to take hold of the sword of justice. Before the Day of Justice, I am sending the Day of Mercy… I am prolonging the time of mercy for the sake of [sinners]. But woe to them if they do not recognize this time of My visitation… 
—Jesus to St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in My Soul, Diary, n. 126I, 1588, 1160

All that we have said in this Octave of Jesus Week is the essence of the Greatest Love Story ever told. God has gone to every length throughout salvation history to woo mankind back to Himself. But there’s an expiry date, and it seems the end of this era is now upon us. I can feel it; you can feel it; even self-professed atheists admit “something” is going on. As we read in Day 1, “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” ^[20]Rev 19:20 His life, His words, His death and resurrection, His Kingdom and His coming reign… this is the heart of all authentic prophecy. As the time of mercy begins to close upon this generation, let us not be counted among those who do not recognize or even reject this time of His visitation. Rather,

…before the coming of the great and splendid day of the Lord, […] it shall be that everyone shall be saved who calls on the name of the Lord. (Acts 2:18-21)

Call upon the King of kings, and Lord of lords, my friend — call upon Jesus, King of Mercy.

 

 

He is risen, alleluia!

So grateful for your prayers and support.
Thank you!

 

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