(Catholic view) Why do we pray for God's Kingdom to come if good people go to heaven when they die?
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The Kingdom of God lies ahead of us. It is brought near in the Word incarnate, it is proclaimed throughout the whole Gospel, and it has come in Christ's death and Resurrection. The Kingdom of God has been coming since the Last Supper and, in the Eucharist, it is in our midst. The kingdom will come in glory when Christ hands it over to his Father:
It may even be . . . that the Kingdom of God means Christ himself, whom we daily desire to come, and whose coming we wish to be manifested quickly to us. For as he is our resurrection, since in him we rise, so he can also be understood as the Kingdom of God, for in him we shall reign.86
And specifically:
In the Lord's Prayer, "thy kingdom come" refers primarily to the final coming of the reign of God through Christ's return. 88 But, far from distracting the Church from her mission in this present world, this desire commits her to it all the more strongly.
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What is a kingdom? It is primarily a king and his subjects, and only secondarily about a territory that is possessed. When you pray for the Kingdom to come:
1) You are asking for the King to come.
2) You are probing for any source of rebellion against that King in your heart and praying for a change of heart that it might cease.
3) You are praying that God will cause that kingdom to grow in extent by converting more rebels to the cause.
4) You are consenting to be an agent of the King to assist in accomplishing that goal.
5) You are praying that those in rebellion fail in their attempts to persuade loyal subjects to rebel.
6) You are praying that this process begin right now, while you ands those for whom you pray still live, instead of waiting until it is too late to change your mind and behavior.
Luke 17 says:
nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
Before you can get into the kingdom, you need for the kingdom to get into you.
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