Items filtered by date: Tuesday, 16 July 2013

Some Thoughts on the Justice and Peace Ministry of the Church
in the Setting of the Kingdom of God

Fr. John Fuellenbach, SVD
Rome, 15. February 2012

The central message of Jesus: The Kingdom of God

There is a unanimous agreement today among all theologians and exegetes that the main topic and the central message of Jesus was the Kingdom of God. A brief look at the Gospels will immediately show that Jesus was driven ( so to speak) by a vision, which he expressed in the following words: AI came to throw fire on the earth and I want to see it burning (Luke 12:49). This vision contains two basic concepts or symbols. The first is the word Abba, the human expression, Jesus used for God whom he experiences so intensely that he called the Father's will his food. The second is the symbol: Kingdom of God which he defined as God's plan or vision for the whole of creation. Jesus himself used this >Kingdom' symbol 92 times. Most of his parables are about his vision of the Kingdom that is coming to earth with him. The phrase Kingdom of God, therefore, contains in a nut shell all he wanted to bring and to communicate. We could say: in order to bring us God's Kingdom he came down to earth, he became one of us so that we could share with him the life of God's Kingdom for ever.

His vision which Saint Paul called the the unfathomable mystery kept hidden through all the ages in God, the Creator of everything (Eph ff. 3:3-11), is to be conceived as both christo-centric and all embracing.

First, Christo-centric means: in view of Christ everything was created, everything will be re-created and everything will find it fulfillment in him. The incarnation is the starting point and the endpoint of creation: in the words of Saint Paul:
Published in JUSTICE AND PEACE (EN)
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