Sunday, June 8, 2025

#159 / A Theological Thought Worth Thinking

 


Bishop Robert Barron, pictured above, has served as Bishop of the Diocese of Winona–Rochester since 2022. He is the founder of the Catholic ministerial organization Word on Fire, and he publishes a daily gospel reflection. Recently, commenting on The Lord's Prayer, Bishop Barron said this: 

Friends, today’s Gospel gives us the Our Father. It asks that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven,” but biblical cosmology sees these two realms as interpenetrating fields of force. Heaven, the arena of God and the angels, touches upon and calls out to earth, the arena of humans, animals, plants, and planets. 
Salvation, therefore, is a matter of the meeting of heaven and earth, so that God might reign as thoroughly here below as he does on high. Jesus’ great prayer, which is constantly on the lips of Christians, is distinctively Jewish in inspiration: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” 
This is decidedly not a prayer that we might escape from the earth, but rather that earth and heaven might come together. The Lord’s Prayer raises to a new level what the prophet Isaiah anticipated: “The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” 
The first Christians saw the Resurrection of Jesus as the commencement of the process by which earth and heaven were being reconciled. They appreciated the risen Christ as the one who would bring the justice of heaven to this world (emphasis added).

My "Two Worlds Hypothesis," formulated long ago, was not inspired by this theological thought. However, I do think that Bishop Barron is presenting, here, a theological thought worth thinking. As you can see, the Bishop is saying that "God's Realm," for those willing to entertain the thought that there is such a thing, is to be found right here, right where we are right now, right here on Planet Earth. 

Seems right to me!



Foundation of Freedom

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