What is the Kingdom of God?


"Jesus came to reveal and bring a new kingship, that of God; He came to bear witness to the truth of a God Who is love, Who wants to establish a kingdom of justice, love and peace. Whoever is open to love hears this testimony and accepts it with faith, to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus clearly had no political ambitions. After the multiplication of the loaves, the people, enthralled by the miracle, wanted to take Him away and make Him their king, in order to overthrow the power of Rome and thus establish a new political kingdom which would be considered the long-awaited kingdom of God. But Jesus knows that God’s kingdom is of a completely different kind; it is not built on arms and violence. The multiplication of the loaves itself becomes both the sign that He is the Messiah and a watershed in His activity: henceforth the path to the Cross becomes ever clearer; there, in the supreme act of love, the promised kingdom, the kingdom of God, will shine forth. … Jesus … does not wish to be defended by arms, but ... to establish His kingdom not by armed conflict, but by the apparent weakness of life-giving love. The kingdom of God is a kingdom utterly different from earthly kingdoms." Benedict XVI

Link to the Talk

A Positive Look at the "Nones" in the Year of Faith

A Positive Look at the "Nones" in the Year of Faith

The Good Earth: Reflections on Evangelization

Blessed  James Alberione,
First Apostle of the
New Evangelization
An E-book from the Pontifical Missionary Union: by Vito Del Prete edited by Emilia Paola Pacel  http://www.fides.org/books/the_good_heart/

Excerpt The new era of humanityPlanetary changes and humanity’s new absolutes: technocracy, mass media, globalisation,the universalistic pretension of culture The Encyclical Redemptoris Missio, in number 37c, significantly used the expression «modern equivalents of the Areopagus» to indicate the places, situations, milieu and particular human groups to which the Church’s evangelizing activity ought to be directed. «After preaching in a number of places, St. Paul arrived in Athens, where he went to the Areopagus and proclaimed the Gospel in language appropriate to and understandable in those surroundings (cf. Acts 17:22-31). At that time the Areopagus represented the cultural centre of the learned people of Athens, and today it can be taken as a symbol of the new sectors in which the Gospel must be proclaimed».The Encyclical does not claim to give an exhaustive list of the fields of missionary commitment, but clearly it indicates the new emergencies and urgencies that are arising from the present historical march of humanity.This is the fruit of sensitivity to a reading and interpretation of the history (signs of the times) of humanity, which must reach its fullness through the sowing and growth of the Kingdom of God within it. Every generation and every age from time to time has situations that need to be redeemed, because they are blatantly harmful to human dignity and to human justice and solidarity. Likewise the inflexible and inhuman logic of discriminatory personal, community and international relations, of economic, political and religious systems is creating new phenomena of slavery, subservience, oppression and conditioning. In order to understand where the Church’s evangelizing efforts ought to be primarily directed it is necessary to analyse the causes, identify the predominant thought, cultures and interests that lie behind and produce this phenomena. In fact this mission of the Church is and remains specific to the extent in which she addresses the proclamation of the Kingdom to those sectors of humanity that have not yet been touched by the Gospel, or are in sharp contrast with human dignity and with the Word of God. «For the Church, evangelizing means bringing the Good News into all the strata of humanity, and through its influence transforming humanity from within and making it new» (Evangelii Nuntiandi [EN] 18).

New Evangelization, New Media, New Technology


During synod discussions, several bishops spoke about the importance of the church learning the particular language and culture of social media and new technology to share the Gospel with people who increasingly spend their time online.
In the propositions, they said Catholics should be trained "to transmit faithfully the content of the faith and of Christian morality" through the media, but they insisted that no technical talent or online presence could take the place of "the testimony of life" lived in accordance with the Gospel.
Synod members described young Catholics not primarily as objects of evangelization, but as evangelizers, especially of their peers.
"As the media greatly influence the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being of the youth," they said, "the church through catechesis and youth ministry strives to enable and equip them to discern between good and evil, to choose Gospel values over worldly values, and to form firm faith convictions." Full Article