The Coming of God's Kingdom

11-21-2021Weekly ReflectionFr. Michael Straley

Let me continue last week’s meditation from the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council:

“While the Church helps the world and herself receives much from the world, she has one object in view: the coming of God’s kingdom and the salvation of the whole human race. Every good that the people of God in the course of its earthly pilgrimage can confer on the human family derives from the fact that the Church is the universal sacrament of salvation, revealing, and at the same time bringing into operation, the mystery of God’s love for all people.

The Word of God, through whom all things were made, was himself made flesh so that as perfect man he might save all men (and women) and bring all things into unity. The Lord is the final end of human history, the point toward which the aspirations of history and civilization are moving the focus of the human race, the joy of all hearts and the fulfillment of their desires. He it is whom the Father raised from the dead, lifted up on high and set at his right hand, appointing him judge of the living and the dead. In his Spirit we have been brought to life and gathering into unity, and so make our pilgrim way toward the goal of human history, a goal in complete harmony with the loving plan of God ‘to make all things one in Christ, the things of heaven and the things on earth.’”

This is the Church we celebrate and live.