NOTES for Luk 17:20-21

Speaking about the Kingdom, Jesus names no dates and points to no places. He says: the Kingdom is within you. The corresponding Greek expression also permits the translation "among you," but this does not change the matter radically: in any case, He does not promise them the kind of Kingdom that the Pharisees who asked the Savior their question hoped to see.

So then, will there be no Kingdom? Is everything only within us, in our hearts? Or among us, in our assemblies? No, of course not. The New Testament books say quite enough to make us look at the Kingdom as a reality on a universal scale. But the Pharisees were asking about something else. They hoped to see an earthly Kingdom. Well, perhaps not entirely earthly. Perhaps one in which a little heavenly would be added to the earthly, just enough for the Kingdom to be revealed to each and everyone as precisely God's, as something that cannot be resisted because not only human but also superhuman forces faithful to God are on its side.

Still, this Kingdom would appear to the world as something completely objective. As something whose obviousness does not depend on any individual person. And the person would only have to accept this obviousness, or oppose the Kingdom and perish. The Kingdom was expected above all as a manifestation of God's power, so that a person would only have to submit to this power, because resisting it is impossible.

Jesus speaks of another Kingdom. Of one that can enter the world only through a person. It makes strong the one through whom it enters. And by its breath it transforms the world, acting from within it through living bearers of the Kingdom. First, the hearts of people; then, the assemblies of the faithful; and at the end of the path and the end of time, the Kingdom in all its universal fullness. A Kingdom that not only conquers people by its power, but also transforms them by its breath. The breath of God's love.