We continue our deep dive into THE HEART OF CATHOLIC PRAYER.
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As we noted last time, we don’t think of the coming of the Kingdom as the apostles and Jesus did.
Oh sure, we acknowledge the story of the Passion as truth. But sooner or later, the story ends, our eyes refocus, and we look around at our adult Sunday school class there in the air-conditioned room with the fluorescent lights and the little table with coffee and Oreos on it and we think, “So it was all leading up to this and the Church social with the fruit salad we had last night?” In short, we think of the Church as a sort of afterthought to the whole drama of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus. A mere “human institution” cooked up by “mere men” who basically needed something to kill the time while they waited around for Jesus to come back.
But Jesus doesn’t. He thinks of the Church as the whole point of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. The Church is, in fullness, what the Kingdom of David was in foreshadow. The promise of the Law and the Prophets—including the prophet called David—has been fulfilled, as Jesus himself told the disciples on the Emmaus Road.
So, for instance, we discover that the Kingdom is nuptial, just as the Davidic Kingdom was. The Davidic Kingdom is inaugurated with language that comes from the most primal union in the history of the human race, “Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron, and said, “Behold, we are your bone and flesh” (2 Samuel 1:1). If that “bone and flesh” imagery sounds like a conscious reference to the language of Genesis—“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23)—that’s because it is. This idea of the Davidic king as a sort of Adam to Israel’s Eve is recapitulated by the Son of David when he inaugurates his public ministry at a wedding (John 2:1-11). The sign he gives at that feast is Eucharistic: changing water into wine in anticipation of the great Eucharistic feast, which is itself nuptial in that it foreshadows the “Marriage Supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9) at the consummation of all things. And in case we still don’t connect the dots, the forerunner of Jesus, John the Baptist, spells it out for us on the next page when he tells us that Jesus is the Bridegroom in the great Messianic wedding (John 3:29-30). That wedding is with none other than the Church, who is the true Bride of Christ. The wedding is consummated when the side of the second Adam, hanging beneath a titulus declaring him to be “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” is pierced on the cross and from his side come blood and water (John 19:19, 34). John doesn’t tell us this because he thought we’d be interested in the medical details of pericardial rupture. He tells us this because this is the moment at which the sacrament of Baptism is inaugurated and the Church, the bride of the second Adam is, like the bride of the first Adam, made from his side: born again in “the Spirit, the water and the blood” (1 John 5:6-8).
In the same way, Jesus fulfills the Davidic promise of a King as the Warrior who defends Israel. However, he does so not by laying down his life in battle for mere plots of land and political power, but for the most contested real estate in the universe: the human heart. In Isaiah 52:13-53:12, we find the “servant of the Lord” (another title for the Messiah or Son of David) offering his life in perfection, not merely for the political triumph of his people, but for their complete redemption from sin and death.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:4-6)
In Psalm 110, we likewise find Jesus completely fulfilling the promise made to the Son of David that he would be a priest forever according to the line of Melchizedek, sharing in a priesthood more ancient and profound that that of the Levitical priesthood—a priesthood which is, again, ordered toward the Eucharist and the eternal outpouring of his life for all the people.
In short, the understanding of the Kingdom looks back to the Davidic Kingdom before it looks forward to the final coming of the King at the end of time. That’s why the Church is not a distraction or declension from the Kingdom, but the concrete expression of the Eucharistic Davidic Kingdom on earth. Now. Today. It is not, of course, the final fulfillment of that Kingdom promise. That will not happen until the Last Day, when the King returns and sin, hell and death are finally and completely defeated. But neither is it something other than or opposite from the Davidic Kingdom Jesus preached whenever he spoke of the Kingdom of God. It is the now and not yet Kingdom. And because it is, it is present in the fully restored Davidic temple, made not by hands but from living stones built together into a spiritual house—the house of the Son of King David. (1 Peter 2:1-10). So the Kingdom and the Church are inseparably fused in the minds of Jesus and the apostles, for where the Church is, there is the Eucharistic King, and where the King is, there is the Kingdom already present and yet still to come.
That is why, as we shall see, we pray for the Kingdom to come and God’s will to be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.
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