The Kingdom of Heaven???

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Before moving to Colorado, my wife, Amparo, and I used to drive from Des Moines to Denver to see our daughter, Maureen, who lives in the city’s southern suburbs. Because of the homilies and the wonderful diversity of the parish, we used to make the long drive to Denver’s City Park neighborhood to attend Mass at St. Ignatius Loyola Church.

The pastor, Dirk Dunfee, S.J., authored and delivered most of the homilies. He has moved on but now writes a blog that has been forwarded to me. Like his homilies, his blogs are cogent, to the point, easy to read, and sometimes funny. In the blog-writing department, I know when I’ve met my match.

This recent blog is based on a gospel reading of the day about a notion that is not easy for contemporary people to grasp, the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God. Jesus uses the terms hundreds of times, but Americans, at least, have little direct experience with kingdoms so the idea may be lost on many of us.

Fr. Dirk has his usual insightful take on the phrase.

How Valuable It Is

“For what seems like the umpteenth day in a row (at Mass) we’re back hearing about the kingdom of heaven,” he writes. “Makes you wonder whether Jesus had anything else to talk about. But again, Jesus doesn’t tell us what the kingdom of heaven is. Rather he tells us how valuable it is and how compelling the thought of having it would be: So much so that you’d sell everything you owned just to be able to put together enough money to buy it.

“And Jesus didn’t envision holding something back just in case, as in “OK, I’ll do this, but I’m going to hold on to the cottage by the lake – just in case.” Perhaps because Jesus, being Jesus, is always trying to get us to render ourselves defenseless before God. And he’s confident that what he has to offer will be worth it.

Dirk Dunfee, S.J.
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“Here’s what I think: The kingdom of heaven is as if we believed the stuff we hear in church. The stuff that sounds so outlandish when you’re not in church; so much so that you don’t dare repeat it at the office. When you see your boss next week are you going to mention the kingdom of heaven? Are you going to ask her to help you understand how precisely the company’s mission fits into God’s realm of love and justice? Of course not. Who does that sort of thing? OK, Jesus, but then look where it got him.

“What is the kingdom of heaven? Maybe a lot of things, all wrapped up in one thing. It’s all of us, agreeing to abandon the ethic of competition and one-upmanship. It’s all of us, dropping from our common vocabulary words like winning or losing, except perhaps in reference to the football pitch. It’s all of us, no longer reminding people of our latest honor or achievement – you know, by just casually slipping it into an otherwise perfectly innocent conversation.

“It’s the subverting of the ego – in me, the wounded and hypervigilant monster that approaches the world with teeth bared, always ready to change the topic: ‘But enough about you; let’s talk about me!’ It’s listening to someone in a way that admits the possibility of changing our thinking about something – you know, listening with traction; listening that might actually go somewhere.

Seeking the Good

“It’s seeking the good – the well-being – of the other in our relationships – in all our relationships. It’s the Common Good, not as a Sunday morning ideal but as a real and universally held way of proceeding. It’s abandoning wealth even as we abandon poverty. It’s adopting an economic system that serves rather than enslaves.

“Earlier on I said that the kingdom of heaven is a lot of things, all wrapped up in one thing. The one thing? The Incarnation, God in human form. In itself so preposterous a concept that only two possibilities exist: Either it’s an utterly untenable fabrication; yet another example of religious wishful thinking – or it’s true.”

Along with Fr. Dirk and billions of others, I believe it is.