inside america

Something More Mysterious than all the Mysteries of the Universe
The Proclamation of the Kingdom of God challenges our openness to the Person of Jesus, as the real tool to realizing the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creating the world.

by lorenzo albacete

I was recently asked to speak to an audience of catechists about the third of the “Mysteries of Light” added to the Rosary by Pope John Paul II: “The Proclamation of the Kingdom of God.” Thinking about what I might say about such a theologically complex subject, it occurred to me that I was concentrating my attention on the mystery of the “Kingdom of God” as such, whereas the mystery of the Rosary is not the Kingdom, but its proclamation. The Proclamation of the Kingdom by Jesus is itself the mystery proposed for our meditation in the context of the Rosary.
The question that I had to ask myself then was: why is the proclamation by Jesus of the coming and/or presence of the Kingdom of God itself a mystery? To put it bluntly, what is so mysterious about the proclamation?

During these days, I have been reading The Grand Design (Bantam Books, NY) by the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking (written with a physicist and author named Leonard Mlodinow, who, among other things, wrote for the TV series “Star Trek, the Next Generation”!). I love physics, especially theoretical physics, “from the microcosm to the macrocosm” (to borrow a phrase of Pope Paul VI).  My heart and mind completely resonate with the quest to learn the “mysteries of the universe” and the possible single mystery, the theory of everything.
Suppose, I thought, that Hawking came into town to present his new book to the public. I imagined myself being there in the packed auditorium, seeing him wheeled in to center stage, hearing the endless applause of his admirers, then the spotlight in the darkness as he said, “I would like you to see a DVD that I prepared about my book. After it is over, I will say a few words and try to answer your questions.”
 At the end of the DVD, the spotlight on Hawking sitting center stage would come back on. I imagined the murmur of the crowd commenting on the majesty of the presentation and then silence as all eyes are fixed on Hawking, waiting for him to speak.
Finally, he speaks: “I have this to announce to you tonight. Everything you have seen in the DVD, all the mysteries of the universe, every single reality that exists or can be imagined, everything known, proposed, or totally unknown–all of it is about me. I am the reason for the existence of everything. I am the reason for the Big Bang and for the future of the universe, the multiverse, the parallel universes… everything is about me and for me.”
I ask myself, “Have I heard him correctly? Is he serious? Is he insane?” I imagine that everyone there would be asking themselves and each other these questions. One thing is clear: I can’t imagine anyone there saying, “Wait a minute. Let us not dismiss what he says because it doesn’t fit the way we think about what is true or false. If he is not joking, if he has not gone crazy, then what he is saying has a hidden meaning that we should investigate.” In this case, Hawking’s announcement would be more fascinating and mysterious than the mysteries of the universe presented in the book and DVD. This is how a proclamation can be called a mystery: the mystery of Stephen Hawking himself.

Now, consider the following incident in the Gospel of Luke: “Jesus went to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day He went into the synagogue, as was His custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it is written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him. He began by saying to them, ‘Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’”

The fulfillment of a prophecy from Scripture probably does not have the impact it had on those at the Synagogue in Nazareth. In presenting Himself as the fulfillment of the prophecy, Jesus was identifying Himself as the presence of the Kingdom of God, that is, as the presence of the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creating the universe. The shock to those present must have been like the shock of that audience that I imagined listening to Hawking’s claim. I wonder how I would have reacted if I had been there when Jesus proclaimed Himself as the presence of the Kingdom of God. Would I have rejected the proclamation because it challenged my way of looking at reality or would I have been like the imagined observer willing to at least ask for evidence of His claim, accepting His proclamation as a mystery to be pursued?
The first proclamation of Jesus as the Kingdom of God was made by the Angel to Mary. As Fr. Giussani said, “Jesus is indeed the center of history and the universe, but before that He was a blob of blood in the womb of a teenage Jewish girl.”That is the reason why the Proclamation of the Kingdom belongs among the mysteries of the Rosary.