THE RETURN

As soon as Jesus came again among men, He learned that the Tetrarch (second husband of Herodias) had imprisoned John in the fortress of Machaerus. The voice crying in the wilderness was stilled and pilgrims to the Jordan saw no more the long shadow of the wild Baptizer fall across the water.

He had done his work and was now to give way to a more powerful voice. John waited in the blackness of the prison until his bloody head was carried on a golden platter to the banquet-almost the last dish served to that evil woman, betrayer of men.

Now Jesus understands that His day is at hand, and crossing Samaria He returns into Galilee to announce at once the coming of the Kingdom. He does not go to Jerusalem, the city of the great king, the capital. Jesus comes to destroy that Jerusalem of stone and arrogance, proud on its three hills, hard of heart like the stones. The men whom Jesus comes to combat are precisely those who glory in great cities, in the capitals, in the Jerusalems of the world.

At Jerusalem live the powerful of the world, the Romans, masters of the world and of Judea, with their soldiers in arms. Jerusalem is ruled by the representatives of the Cæsars; of Tiberius, the drunken assassin, the perfidious heir of Augustus, the hypocritical voluptuary, and of Julius the adulterous spendthrift. At Jerusalem live the High Priests, the old custodians of the Temple, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, the Levites and their guards, the descendants of those who pursued and killed the prophets, the petrifiers of the Law, the bigots of the letter, the haughty depositories of arid fanaticism. At Jerusalem are the treasurers of God, the treasurers of Cæsar, the guardians of the treasure, the lovers of wealth; the Publicans with their excisemen and parasites, the rich with their servants and their concubines, the merchants with their crowded shops; money bags clinking with shekels in the warmth of the bosom above the heart.

Jesus comes to combat all these. He comes to conquer the

masters of the earth—the earth which belongs to all; to confound the masters of the word-the word which should be spoken freely wherever God wishes; to condemn the masters of gold, base, perishable and fatal element. He comes to overthrow the kingdom of the soldiers of Rome who oppress bodies; the kingdom of the priests of the Temple who oppress souls; the kingdom of the heapers-up of money who oppress the poor. He comes to save bodies, souls, the poor; He teaches liberty, in opposition to Rome; setting at naught the doctrines of the Temple, He teaches love; He teaches poverty against all the ideals of the rich.

He does not wish to begin His message in Jerusalem where His enemies, gathered together, are the strongest. He wishes to surround the city, take it from the outside, arrive there later with a following behind Him, when already the Kingdom of Heaven has begun slowly to lay siege to it. The Conquest of Jerusalem will be the last test, the supreme trial, the great battle, the tremendous battle between the greater than the Prophets and Jerusalem, slayer of Prophets. If He should go to Jerusalem now (where He will enter presently as a king and whence He will be buried as a criminal) He would be taken prisoner at once and would not be able to sow His word on less ungrateful, less stony soil.

Jerusalem like all capitals-great sewers to which flow the refuse, the outcasts, the rubbish of the nations-is inhabited by a mob of frivolous, elegant, idle, skeptical and indifferent people, by a ceremonious patrician class who have kept only the tradition of ritual and the sterile rancor of their decadence; by an aristocracy of property owners and speculators who belong to the herd of Mammon, and by a rebellious, restless, ignorant crowd, controlled only by the superstition of the Temple and the fear of the foreigner's sword. Jerusalem was not fit soil for the sowing of Jesus.

A man from the provinces,-therefore healthy and solitaryHe goes back to His province. He wishes to carry the tidings of good news to those who were to be the first to receive Him, to the poor and the humble because the tidings are specially for them, because they have long been waiting for them, and

because more than any others, they will rejoice. Jesus' coming into the world is for the poor. Therefore leaving Jerusalem, He arrives in Galilee, enters into the Synagogue and begins to teach.

THE REIGN OF GOD

The first words of Jesus are few and simple, very much like those of John, "The time is accomplished; the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the Gospel."

Bare words, incomprehensible to moderns by their very sobriety. To understand them and to understand the difference between the message of John and the message of Jesus, they need to be translated into our language, filled again with their eternally living meaning.

"The time has come!" The time for which men have been waiting, which they have prophesied and announced. John said that a King would come ready to found the new Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven. The King has come and announces that the doors of the Kingdom are open. He is the guide, the path, the hand, before being King in all the splendor of His celestial glory.

When Jesus says "The time is accomplished," he does not refer to the exact date, to the fact that it was the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius. The time of Jesus is now and always is eternity. The moment of His appearance, the moment of His death, the moment of His return, the moment of His perfect triumph, has not yet arrived, not even yet! And yet, at every moment the time is accomplished, every hour is the fullness of time, on condition that the workers are ready. Every day is His; His era is not written down in numbers: there is no chronology in eternity. Every time a man tries to enter into the Kingdom, confirms the Kingdom by believing, enriches the Kingdom, consolidates, defends, proclaims its perpetual sanctity and its perpetual rightness in opposition to all the inferior kingdoms (inferior because they are human, not divine, earthly not heavenly) then always the time is accomplished. This time is called the epoch of Jesus, the Christian era, the New Covenant. Not quite two thousand

s, because nd years are

e in the ffullsecond day has are scarcely century (and haps not see the see the end of this in this Kingdom, m is not the wornturies ago; it is not my. The Kingdom lity of the future alwork started a short ree to put his hand to

ems old, the message echoes of two thousand true, accomplished-is grow, to flower, to prosdeearth, but the seed has

sand years passed like a Ser human generations. Is it e after the flood of blood is

Sail learn page by page in the
magine it as a new Paradise

of beatitude, as an immense
their feet on the clouds and their

of God as opposed to the King-
of the Kingdom of Earth. The
dom of evil, of deceit, of cruelty,
sness. Therefore the Kingdom of
good, of sincerity, of love, of humil-
Jaity

Sis the Kingdom of matter and of
id, hatred, avarice, sensuality, the
Javed by evil and distraught men. The

be the opposite of this: the Kingdom ul, the Kingdom of renunciation and of all things valued by men who know erything else in comparison. God is Heaven is above the earth, hence it is God's home. The spirit is the dominion crawls on the earth, grubs in the earth, atter-that is bestiality; all that lives desiring Heaven, wishing to live forever Holiness. Most men are beasts. It is these beasts become saints. This is the ving meaning of the Kingdom of God, and Heaven.

of God is of men and for men. The Kingdom us. Begin at once: it is our work, for our is life on this earth. It depends on our will, Become perfect and the extend even on earth. The Kingdom of God ed among men.

that Jesus added "repent," but the old word has ed from its true and magnificent meaning. The Mark-uɛravoɛite-should not be translated "reTavola means rather the changing of the mind, the mation of the soul. Metamorphosis is a change of Detanoia," a changing of the spirit. It ought rather to ated "conversion," that is, the renewing of the inner man. The idea of "repentance" is only an illustration st's command.

one of the conditions of the arrival of the Kingdom and ne time as the very substance of the new order, Jesus complete conversion, a revolution of life and of the values of life, a transmutation of feelings, of opinions, tions. This He called, speaking to Nicodemus, "the birth." Little by little He was to explain in what way tal transformation of the ordinary human soul is to be ed. All His life was devoted to this teaching and to setting example. But in the meantime, He contented Himself adding one conclusion, "Believe in the Gospel."