Attainment of the Kingdom of Heaven

Father, may everything we do begin with your inspiration and continue with your saving help, let all our works find their origin in you and through you, reach completion.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

• Explore on how one would experience forgiveness and healing during the Reign of God.

• Discuss the requirement (obedience) towards
  the attainment of the kingdom of God

• Describe Poverty and detachment

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Learning Objectives

• Explore on how one would experience forgiveness and healing during the Reign of God.

FALSE

Jesus travelled around very much and had therefore to sleep on the side of the road or in the houses of friends, but he did have a home in Capernaum, possibly in a house he shared with Peter, Andrew and their families.

FALSE

Jesus would sometimes have had to compel the beggars to come, and to invite himself to dine at the houses of sinners.

It would be impossible to overestimate the impact these meals must have had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as friends and equals Jesus had taken away their shame, humiliation and guilt.

FALSE

The last supper was indeed the last of many such suppers. After his death his followers kept up his memory by continuing to break bread together. This was how he had wished to be remembered — in the context of a festive meal. “Do this in memory of me”

because Jesus was looked upon as a man of God and a prophet, they would have interpreted his gesture of friendship as God’s approval of them. They were now acceptable to God.

 Sins were debts owing to God (Mt 6:12; 18:23-35).

These debts had been incurred in the past by oneself or one’s ancestors as a result of some transgression of the law.

The transgressions could have been committed deliberately or by mistake, as we have already seen. Thus, an illegitimate or racially mixed Jew was thought of as living in a permanent state of sin or indebtedness to God because of the transgression of his ancestors. So, they needed healers.

FALSE

There were doctors or physicians in those days. But they were few and far between, their knowledge of medicine was very limited, and the poor could seldom afford to consult them. Some resorted to EXORCISM.

TRUE

Professional exorcists claimed to cast out evil spirits through precise observance of an ancient ritual formula that included incantations, symbolic actions, and the use of certain substances.

FALSE

There is very little to distinguish

EXORCISM from magic that is why

some people asked the help of holy people.

TRUE

Occasionally, a holy man could cure someone through simple and spontaneous prayer to God that is why people followed Jesus.

FALSE

Jesus did sometimes make use of his own saliva, a sub- stance generally thought to be medicinal (Mk 7:33; 8:23). There was certainly a spontaneous concern to make some kind of physical contact with the sick person (e.g., Mk 1:31, 41; 6:56; 8:22-25). He touched them, took them by the hand or laid his hands on them. He even cast out demons.

FALSE

Jesus never made use of any kind of ritual formulae,

incantations or invocations of names. It is very likely that he was accused of exorcising in the name of Beelzebub or Satan precisely because he had not invoked any other authority nor used any traditional ritual.

TRUE

Jesus relied upon the power of faith. It was not prayer as such that effected the cure, it was faith (Mt 21:22).

FALSE

Jesus is beyond any of the contemporary categories of physician, exorcist, wonder-worker or holy man.

FALSE

This faith is obviously not the same as subscribing to a creed or a set of doctrines and dogmas. And yet it is a conviction, a very strong conviction.

FALSE

When Jesus’ disciples first tried to cast out evil spirits, they did not succeed because their conviction was still weak and hesitant, they had too little faith (Mt 17:19-20).

FALSE

it does not mean that the power of faith is simply the

power of a strong conviction or the psychosomatic influence of a powerful suggestion which effects a cure by means of what is called “overpowering therapy.

FALSE

Faith is not any conviction at all —true or false, good, bad or indifferent. It is a particular kind of conviction and it receives its power from the kind of conviction that it is. Faith is a good and a true conviction.

FALSE

It is the conviction that God is good to humanity and that God can and will triumph over all evil. The power of faith is the power of goodness and truth, which is the power of God.

The opposite of faith is therefore fatalism. Fatalism is the prevailing attitude of most people, most of the time. It finds expression in statements like “Nothing can be done about it.” “You can’t change the world.”

FALSE

Unbelief and despair are two different aspects of fatalism

TRUE

Faith in the biblical sense of the word is almost

indistinguishable from hope (e.g., Heb 11:1; Rom 4:18-22).9 The most that one could say would be that faith and hope are two

different aspects of one and the same attitude of mind

Jesus was the initiator of faith. But once it had been initiated it could spread from one person to another. The faith of one person could awaken faith in another. The disciples were sent out to awaken faith in others.

FALSE

Miracles in the Bible are unusual acts of God that are part of God's providence.

The laws of nature have an extremely important and practical value for us, but they should not be regarded as the last words about what is possible or impossible in life.

Obedience towards the attainment of the kingdom of God

FALSE

Luke found in his sources a story about Jesus reading Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth. He took this story and, inserting one of the passages from Isaiah which describe Jesus’ activity.

TRUE

The deaf, dumb, blind, lame, poor, broken-hearted, captives and downtrodden are simply different ways of referring to the poor and the oppressed.

It follows that the verbs in each of these sentences are simply different ways of describing the action

which God promises in relation to the poor and the oppressed.

TRUE

healing,

restoring sight and hearing,

bringing joy, setting free,

proclaiming liberty or

favor and bringing good news

FALSE

To evangelize or bring good news to the poor means to liberate them with the spoken word.

FALSE

Isaiah and Jesus himself made use of the verb “evangelize” It was the early Christians who first used the noun “gospel” or “good news” as a way of referring to the content or message which Jesus proclaimed to the poor and the oppressed.

We call something “news” when it tells of a new event, an event which has taken place recently or an event which we can now feel sure will take place in the near future. We say it is “good news” when the news is hopeful and encouraging, when it tends to make people happy.

FALSE

It is Luke who has preserved for us the more original form of the prophecy. Here it is still addressed to Jesus’ contemporaries: you who are poor, hungry and miserable.

FALSE

Matthew has adapted the prophecy to the needs of his readers who were not in fact poor, hungry and miserable. He has extended the blessings and promises to anyone who is poor at heart or one in spirit with the poor, anyone who hungers and thirsts for justice.

TRUE

Matthew has turned a prophecy into an exhortation.

FALSE

The Kingdom of Heaven during the time of Christ is referred to the Kingdom of God.