Third Luminous Mystery: The Proclamation of the Kingdom and Call to Conversion
...seeking life in the Holy Spirit during Lent
Standard opening to each mystery [modified]: This series offers brief meditations on each of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. The third Luminous Mystery is about the “Coming of the Kingdom and Call to Conversion” which is central to the Lenten season of penance and seeking the Kingdom of God. Penance is not an end in itself, nor are the sufferings of Lent. The end and goal of Lent and its penances is deeper interior union with Christ through love of Jesus and desire to partake of his saving mysteries. The holiness that Lent offers us is a renewed and deeper union with Christ, the Philanthropos, the lover of every human. We must come to perceive God’s love in Christ (cf. John 3:16).
These brief meditations will look at each of the Luminous Mysteries in terms of their theological significance and their offering of the Kingdom—a share in God’s own divinity and light as “partakers of the Holy Spirit” (Heb 6:4). It is by desiring the heavenly goods of the Kingdom which these mysteries offer to us (cf. Heb 6:4-5) that we become more converted to Christ, our source of holiness. Desire and love follow upon knowledge. A person does not desire and love what he does not know. Love follows recognition of the good being offered to us. In these mysteries, we try to recognize Christ seeking us out and wanting to share his life and divinity in our souls.
These meditations will follow the key mystical teaching of Saint Catherine of Siena: to grow in holiness, then our desire for God must increase without limit (cf. The Dialogue, Ch. 91-92). We must recognize Jesus more and more as our true good. The Gospel must be presented. It is by praying these mysteries in union with Mary, “now and at the hour of our death,” that Our Loving Mother accompanies us with the grace of the Holy Spirit in her maternal care of every member of Christ’s mystical body. She is Mother of the Church. In the Rosary, we join with her in contemplating Jesus Christ our savior and the goods he wants us to possess: the infinite good of God himself in us (cf. Col 1:27) and “making us partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
Theological Significance of the Kingdom and Call to Conversion
At the center of all the Luminous Mysteries is that Christ came to give us the Holy Spirit [eternal life, God’s own transcendent life in the mystery bestowed by the Divine Person who is Gift]. Since Christ bestows a Kingdom (cf. Lk 22:29)[i], this means that the Holy Spirit is the Kingdom of God. As Gregory of Nyssa teaches: “The Kingdom is the Holy Spirit.”[ii] To receive the Holy Spirit within our souls, to become a “partaker of the Holy Spirit” (Heb 6:4) is to begin to enter the Kingdom as we begin to mean and abide more fully in the words: “thy Kingdom come, thy Will be done.”
Too often, even deeply religious and holy men and women are tempted to think of the Kingdom in too worldly or inner-worldly a manner. However, time and eternity always remain distinct realities as do Christ’s human nature and his divine nature. Christ’s humanity and divinity are hypostatically united, but the two natures remained truly distinct when the Logos became flesh. The Kingdom comes into this world and can bring this world to participate in the Kingdom, but this world of the temporal never becomes the Kingdom: “The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history…” (CCC #676). Only in Christ are time and eternity truly an inseparable mystery. In Christ’s very first Sermon he wanted to break us of thinking about the gift of the Kingdom as though it replaces the earthly before the end of time…
“Blessed are the poor, theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the Land. Blessed are those who mourn… Blessed are those who hunger and thirst…” Just what kind of kingdom was coming into this world which kept promising reaching God while failing to reach every worldly understanding of power and authority? It is the mystery of Jesus himself: “God became man so that man might become God” (cf. CCC #460). The Beatitudes are the autobiography of Jesus Christ. He is calling us to enter his mystery of abiding in the Divine Will and following him in heart and mind so that we can receive the divinity that is inside his humanity.
[“The Sermon on the Mount” by Fra Angelico, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
The difference between natural goals and needs and supernatural vocation can be perplexing. Even John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the Messiah or should we expect another?” Afterall, are you really going to leave a prophet as great as John to lose his head over a belly-dancing woman? Won’t the Messiah bring the kingdom in such a manner that earth ceases to be earth and so is simply replaced by heaven, the kingdom? NO. Earth is earth (the temporal) and the kingdom (eternal life) is not of this world. Time ceases in the full manifestation of the Kingdom and so in the meantime the Kingdom comes in a manner that moves time to its fulfillment.
“Tell John what you hear and see: that the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me” (Mt 11:4-6). Jesus did not come to save us from the world, he came so that through the Spirit we can overcome the world by the Way of the Cross, the Beatitudes. Only the Spirit can enable us to walk by faith, hope, and charity and so enter the Beatitudes, Christ’s mystery.
Compared to Jesus, John the Baptist got the easier way out. Jesus was tortured all night and into the next day after his arrest. He was scourged to the bone beyond the usual, and died slowly, suffocating for hours as a result of his scourging-beatings and crucifixion. Jesus loved John deeply and communicated what must be understood. Beatitude: “Blessed is he who takes no offense at me” (Mt 11:6).
John the Baptist understood Jesus’ response and came to accept that it is the prophet’s role to die an ignominious death and so enter true glory (cf. Romano Guardini, The Lord). True Glory is so entering into God’s will through a life of surrender to God, that our human wills are taken up into God’s Will and we live off of and by God’s Divine Will. The earthly and human aspects of us remain [freedom and free will], but they are exalted by life in the Spirit, true holiness and righteousness as “partakers of the Holy Spirit” (Heb 6:4).
Jesus explained in parables the gift of the Spirit to our souls, the Kingdom, and making us members of his mystical body: growing progressively like wheat in a field; a barely visible mustard seed that grows into a great organism; the greatest of all treasures to be sought; and, talents that must be multiplied. We must not be scandalized that the Kingdom does not come by force of arms and that the meek inherit the earth as the Beatitudes explained. The Kingdom comes secretly and in mystery as a Gift from above until the time of harvest. The Kingdom develops within us by our surrendering of our wills to God in daily on-going sanctification and the slow death of the old man so as to enter the new man (cf. Ephesians 4:22-24).
Seek First the Kingdom of God, The Kingdom is the Spirit
In meditating on the Third Luminous Mystery of the Proclamation of the Kingdom and the Call to Conversion – in union with the heart of Mary – through ten “Hail Mary’s” [a decade], what should we be contemplating? Jesus is the mystery of the Kingdom and through his glorified body he has become a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15:45); Jesus baptizes us with the Holy Spirit [as discussed in the First Luminous Mystery]. Jesus wants us to believe in him so that we can have a union with him by faith which unites us to the Holy Spirit within him. Faith unites us with Christ and establishes the bond by which the Holy Spirit is shared with us.
In the Rosary, we need to be asking Jesus and the Holy Spirit for the desire to rightly order our lives and put the Father in the first place in our lives in everything we seek and do. We want to build a better world and for the fruits of the Kingdom to appear in our souls and in our world even if the Kingdom and this world always remain distinct realities until the end of time. “The transcendent power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7). Even though distinct, the world and the earthly can participate in the Kingdom through our knowledge and love of God. “Knowing God” turns us to love our neighbors in habitual acts of charity and develop the world in accord with the Kingdom.
God is aware of earthly needs before we even pray. He wants our flourishing and prudent fulfilment of earthly needs, but the best way to achieve these are through always first being concerned for the things of God within our daily duties.
Jesus emphasized that we must “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these [earthly needs] shall be [supplied] as well” (Mt 6:33). This is why when we pray for our earthly needs, we should always give priority to asking for the gift of abiding more fully in the Holy Spirit: “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:11-13).
The Beatitudes call us to be Pure of Heart
The Call to Conversion is inseparable from the Proclamation of the Kingdom. It includes that we learn to put prayer first in our lives so that we are enlightened by prayer to seek God’s Will and perceive God’s Will. Jesus teaches us to pray: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Every Christian, and not just religious, is called to holiness.
Sin exists where we believe that we are mature and no longer need to “grow into Christ in every way” (Eph 4:15). No longer breaking the Commandments is only the beginning of the Christian life. We must seek first the Kingdom of God and this means the on-going and daily renewal of our minds and hearts. It means striving to increase in virtue as we come to accept our sinfulness and absolute dependence on God’s mercy as we are constantly tried by the world, the flesh, and the devil. “For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control…for whoever lacks these things is blind and short-sighted” (2 Peter 1:5-9).
In the Sermon on the Mount, what did Jesus mean by saying “Blessed are the pure in heart, they shall see God”? He was emphasizing that we must seek first the kingdom of heaven [union with God] and we must desire heaven [God] in all that we do or that we will fall short of union with God. Singular devotion and zeal for God above all earthly desires is the one thing that carries the human will into God’s will so that we can SEE GOD. The universal call to holiness means that the Holy Spirit is given to us so that we overcome sin AND grow in the virtues that the Holy Spirit makes possible: “therefore brethren, be the more zealous to confirm your call and election for if you do this you will never fail; so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:10-11).
[Next Installment in 3-4 weeks: The Transfiguration]
With testimonials from several noted authors, see Dr. Tsakanikas’ revised and newly published book on Amazon which the above article complemented [click below]:
A Catechesis on Deification, Transfiguration, and the Luminous Mysteries
[i] cf. Scott W. Hahn, “Christ, Kingdom, and Creation: Davidic Christology and Ecclesiology in Luke-Acts,” in Letter and Spirit, Vol. 3 (2007): 113-138, at 131-132.
[ii] See: Matthew A. Tsakanikas, A Catechesis on Deification, Transfiguration & the Luminous Mysteries (St. Louis: En Route Books & Media, 2025), 128-129.
