57._ Imminence

The disciples of Jesus believed and waited all this that we have said before. But they, naturally, knew anything of the "threshold of the last emergency", neither of the "personal time", nor of the "loop in the time". They hoped that everything happened "right now", at their time, here in the Earth, imminently, as Jesus had said. They waited, for "one of these days", the prodigious event: that literally appeared Jesus Christ like Son of Man, coming on clouds to implant his Kingdom, defeating to the Romans, confusing to the Jewish authorities, judging the unjust ones, and compensating them.

Their preoccupation was by the "brothers" who died, in case they were going to lose the great event; but Paul consoled them assuring to them that those that died in that hope would revive first, that would not lose anything. It was certainly an ingenuous faith, quite absurd, although it was an unshakeable, wonderful faith, by which they risked and they left everything. They lived hoping, excited and impatient, the coming of the Lord, the "Parusia"; at any time, by surprise, since the Lord had said: "you do not know to the day nor the hour".

They hoped, surely, to see themselves soon free of the slavery, the disease, the violence, the brutality, all their deficiencies and limitations, the innumerable shortages of the life; but they were arranged to share their goods, to serve ones to others, to work untiringly, to risk and to be killed for that reason.
They thought, perhaps, that they were the "faithful rest" that would be compensated, elevated to the highest seats of honor of the Kingdom; but they invited to unite to them to all people, rich and poor, free and enslaved, Jewish and gentile, of all class and condition, opening to them generously the arms, to welcome them like brothers in their community, in their "church".

58._ Church

Thus proliferated, and prospered, communities by all the regions and cities around the Mediterranean and further on. They met to comment what it had happened in days of the Master, to mutually share and to increase their faith in the resurrection, to narrate again –and for the first time to those just arrived--, the sayings and facts from their Master, and thus to go better understanding them.

The years spent; the old ones which had been eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus, the first apostles, were dying; their friends and disciples were putting in writing the stories and doctrines that had heard to them; innumerable stories, oral and written, were being collected, compiling, to form greater writings authorized officially, recognized and accepted by all --among other many rejected--, in different cities and regions; later they were reunited in books: the "gospels" of (the successors of) Mark, Mattew, Luke and John, and the most important letters --mainly those of the converted Paul, the apostle of the gentile ones, who had developed the first Christian theology--, and the "Acts of the Apostles" of Luke and the "Revelation" of John; all wrote in its definitive form around half century after Christ.

59._ Pilgrimage and mission

According to were spending the years and dying the people, without appearing the Kingdom of God, was raising the disquieting inevitably doubt: was mistaken Jesus?

He had said that it would not pass a generation without everything was fulfilled; but that generation had happened and the Kingdom was not visible; on the contrary, were increased the persecutions and the misfortunes.

Then they were assuming the conviction of that the coming of Jesus Christ, the Parusia, the "second coming", would take much yet; therefore there was to be preparing the Kingdom little by little in the practical normal life, in "this world". Instead of remaining watching towards the clouds to see appear on them the Son of Man, it seemed them to see ascend Jesus Christ towards the clouds, while the angels said to them: "what there you do watching the sky? He will return, as he has gone away ".

Now begins the long pilgrimage of the church of Jesus Christ by history, as it were the pilgrimage of Israel by the desert; the calves of gold, the apostasies, the idolatries, the violences and the crimes will come --many in name of God and Christ--; but also the repentances, the works of justice and mercy, the orations, the manna and the quails; and in the end it waits --like then-- the Promised Land.

The Church will have to work in this world by the Kingdom, calling to all to the conversion, proclaiming the good news, reinforcing the ethics that leads to the humanity to the attainment of the Last Newness.

Certainly, the presence of the spirit of God in the human level of emergence, like "drops of providence in the sea of the chance and the necessity", or like a "secret voice", guides to the humanity in its enterprise of self-completion; nevertheless, it does not stop being uncertain its success; it is obvious that to the Spirit a reinforcing comes to him well, and it is not disrespectful to affirm it, since it comes to him from Himself.

It is the spirit of Redemption that goes in reinforcement of the spirit of Creation, being both two "moments" of the same spirit of God. As we said previously: "we do not have to forget that when speaking of the Redemption we are speaking of a “loop” in the time. The spirit of God, operating in the Redemption, reinforces His immanent creative action in the nature, in the humanity. God ‘realizes Himself’ also by means of the Redemption." Could be imagined a better reinforcement than the contributed one by the own goal for the recognition of the means that to him lead?
Thus, God does not leave us in the risk of not being able to hear His weak "secret voice", but amplifies it and explains it abundantly: the natural ethics, the one of the "love God and to the neighbour", is completed with the ethics of "love each other as I have loved you"; the unknown face of a God only reasonable becomes the revealed face of the benevolent Father.

The natural ethics, that it looks for God, knows the necessity to count on the others. Still more: it is when opening itself to the others to jointly find the own accomplishment, that considers the project of God. But never it is sufficiently sure, in the concrete historical development, which is the value of the individual; it can seem that each individual is a solely insignificant means and entirely "sacrificeable" in altars of the "common good". In fact, it is not only inevitable that the individuals suffer and die, but that often is seen like advisable. History is "a slaughter house". The society has put under, and puts under, to countless individuals to the oppression and the injustice.

Can be justified this by a shining and wonderful future for which will remain of the humanity? It can be justified in name of God? The Spirit of Redemption that comes from the Father and the Son, who flows from the crucified/resurrected one, gives the answer to us: God revealed His criteria; the Church, missionary of the Kingdom, must proclaim them to reinforce the human ethical development and separate it from its deviations:

All the individuals, all the people of any time and condition, are "redeemable", are loved of God. All person has been rescued by God and has an infinite value, independently of her merits or faults. All person is called to the salvation, invited to the Kingdom, and this wants to do it God respecting her freedom, softly, without impositions, lovingly. All injustice and oppression are opposite to the will of God, is a way misled for the completion of the humanity.

The mission of the Kingdom cannot consist of sustaining a structure of human power, cannot be the endorsement of a closed moral; on the contrary, it must consist of "fermenting" the human societies, providing them with a moral opened towards the Last Newness.
It cannot either consist of the disinteresting of the terrenal reality, of an ascetic ideal that rejects the material, the vital thing and the human thing, to wait for an “ultraworldly heaven” passively; it must incarnate in the world and history the criteria of benevolent God, load the cross of the reality to carry it to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

60._ Prolepsis

But an aspect that is most important, in our opinion, exists, of the mission of the Church: the "anticipation" of the Kingdom.
Jesus Christ was not mistaken: the Kingdom yes is imminent if is seen it from a personal point of view, as surely He saw it.

(We have affirmed that the Redemption makes a "loop" in time: the spirit of God has united the final moment of history --the "threshold of the last emergence"-- with the historical moment of the death/resurrection of Jesus. We can conceive, then, that in front of the conscience of Jesus two "futures" were opened, two temporary routes: one, the one that happens through his death and follows by the normal historical temporary sequence; the other, the one that in his same death reaches the resurrection at the end of history. This second route is the one that gets to be most real for him: absorbed in it, he speaks of a real and certain imminence of the Kingdom, that will be visible also to which soon communicates his Spirit, providing to them a perspective and an experience authentically anticipatory of the time end.)

For who sees it with "the eyes of this world", in the public, universal time, he lacks thousands of million years --probably-- for the appearance of the Kingdom. But for each individual person, her resurrection to the Kingdom arrives at the moment of her death; it comes soon, at most in few years, surprisingly, unexpectedly perhaps; therefore, she must be prepared, she must keep guard and pray, without letting extinguish her lamp of faith, like the one who feasts, which at night waits the coming of the husband, to the dawn. And to maintain and reinforce her faith and hope, she will be living anticipately the establishment of the Kingdom; for her, from grace of the Spirit, the Kingdom already is here, early; right now her transformation begins to incorporate her to the Mystical Body; her judgment and conversion are happening continuously during her life. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are already present in her interior, and in the middle of which they meet in His name.

In his last supper with his disciples, Jesus offered the bread to them saying: "you take and you eat, this is my body, that will be given by you". He talked about, in a triple identification, to the bread, his present human body, and his future Mystical Body; in a symbolic anticipatory act --but authentically real--, who eats of that bread is participating early in his death: that "given" body; but also of his resurrection: incorporating himself to His revived Mystical Body, as He had predicted saying: "I am the bread of life came from the heaven; who eats of it will live for always". And the wine is also authentically anticipatory symbol, as much of His blood physically spilled in the cross, like of the spiritual blood, the divine grace, that flows towards each member of His Mystical Body.

There is a Greek word that means "authentic anticipation": "prolepsis", that is used to talk about to experiences like this one. The supper of the Lord, the ritual consecration and consuming of bread and wine, as real symbols of His body and blood, are prolepsis of the death and the resurrection of Christ; who participates in it with this intention is anticipating, simultaneously that commemorating, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the coming of His Kingdom. It is the sacrament of the Eucaristy.

The Christian Church is, then, the community --or communities-- that, by grace of the Spirit, lives "proleptically" the Kingdom of God. She herself is --in spite of the unworthy that she can be of it-- prolepsis of the New Jerusalem, the universal community of the redeemed ones that will be the Church in total sense. The Christian lives early in the Kingdom of God through the sacraments: "proleptic signs" of the events and gifts that will be manifested totally to the time end. The baptism is prolepsis of the death (immersion) and resurrection (emergence), and of that new polished identity --"we ourselves"-- that will be reached by means of the acceptance of the grace of God. The sacrament of the "reconciliation", "penance", or "confession", is prolepsis of the repentance and the pardon that are requisite and beginning of the transformation and the entrance in the Kingdom. The "communion" is prolepsis of the incorporation to the Mystical Body, a "spiritual flesh" and "spiritual blood" shared with all through Christ –the anakefaleosis--, for the eternal union with God --the apokatastasis.

The sacramental life, the oration, the meditation, but mainly the right and merciful action to imitation of Jesus --on agreement to His new commandement: "love each other as I have loved to you"--, and all form of authentically Christian activity, can acquire this "proleptic" meaning, that allows us to enjoy early the eternal goods, and to be prepared for the imminent --in personal time-- coming of the Kingdom of God.

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