“If it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you” (Lk 11:20). Jesus does not say that the kingdom of God will come, but rather, that in his own casting out of demons, the Kingdom of God has come! Too often, we speak of the Kingdom of God as something that is to come, something that we ought to work for, while failing to see that in the gospels, the Kingdom of God is something that has already arrived in Jesus. But saying this is not enough, because there are some people who might be happy to affirm that the Kingdom of God came in Jesus, but then went away again after a while (at the Ascension), only to return again at the end of time. But what about Pentecost and Jesus’s insistence that it is better for the disciples that he leave, so that they might receive the Holy Spirit (John 16)?
While we do await a fulfillment that can only come at the end of time, the scriptures indicate that the Kingdom of God is present even in the here and now, even in our lives today, and perhaps even at moments that might shock and unsettle us (as Flannery O’Connor’s work often likes to remind us). In Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God has come, and it has not left. Let us ask not only for eyes to see that Kingdom more and more in our days and through our daily examens, but let us ask also for the grace to be instruments of that Kingdom, so that Christ, and not “seven other spirits,” may reign in hearts prepared for Him (Lk 11:15-26).