What is "The Kingdom" Jesus keeps talking about?

I heard a talk on time that posed the question, "What did Jesus talk about the most in his ministry?"  This was a curious question.  I've never thought too much about that.  Was it forgiveness? Being obedient? Following the commandments? Being merciful?  He talks about each of those a lot...  It turns out that the idea that he keeps bring up over and over and over again is, the Kingdom.  So, we would do well to study precisely what "the Kingdom" is.  If you are like me, the first mention of the kingdom that comes to mind is in the Lord's prayer:

"...Thy Kingdom come, thy Will be done..."

This prayer is present in both Matthew's and Luke's gospel.  My early impression of the Kingdom was that of Heaven.  When we say, "Thy Kingdom come," my imagination takes that as "it ain't here yet".  But that word is a little tricky.  If someone says "Come on over," we think of this as a future tense.  But how would you ask if it happened?  "Did you come over?"  We use the same word to reference the past as well.  Here, the verb "come" depends more on the noun than the action.  Weird.  Anyway, more on that in a bit.  To make a long story short, I have always thought that "The Kingdom" was simply, Heaven.  And that if we die before Jesus comes back, we will go to the Kingdom.  But ultimately, when we say "Thy Kingdom come" I thought we were really referring to the 2nd coming.  But is this really the case?

What are some other things that Jesus compares the Kingdom to in Matthew's gospel?  Here are a few:

• A man who sowed good seed in his field (Mat 13:24)
• A mustard seed (Mat 13:31)
• Leaven (Mat 13:33)
• Treasure hidden in a field (Mat 13:44)
• A merchant in search of fine pearls (Mat 13:45)
• A net (Mat 13:47)

A couple of these stand out with a particular problem...  Can these happen in Heaven alone?  Look at the sower.  The sower tosses out some seed and, "the enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat."  Wait, what?  Can the devil put bad people in Heaven?  Absolutely not.  Hmmm.  The kingdom is like leaven, toss in a little and it will leaven the whole batch.  Wait, is all of Heaven not yet holy?  Why would the leaven need to spread?  The kingdom is like a net, it will be tossed into the sea and catch a bunch of fish, but the fishermen keep the good and toss out the bad.  But, there are only "good fish" in Heaven.  I only mentioned a few, but almost all of them have some sort of element that suggest that there is evil around the Kingdom.  The Kingdom can't simply be Heaven alone, it must have some sort of earthly component.

What would that earthly component be?  If we look around the world and start to search for the Kingdom we might see something interesting.  Scott Hahn put this quite well, "Where ever the King is, there is his Kingdom."  Yes!  So, the "Kingdom" is actually the Church.  When we put on this lens, the parables make perfect sense.  There are weeds among the body of Christ.  The Church was put into the world like leaven so that it would spread to the whole world.  The Gospel is proclaimed through the Church and it will catch the "good fish".  The Church is a treasure that we are meant to find.

Scott Hahn's quote actually went one step further, "Where ever the King is, there is his Kingdom; and where ever the Eucharist is, there is the King."  (dramatic pause).  The first time I heard this, I had to pick my jaw up off of the floor.  Wow.  The Kingdom is the Church.  Christ gave us the Church and he didn't leave us at all.  He is with us each and every day in the Eucharist.  In the mass, we participate with all of the heavens in our worship of Christ.  Heaven touches earth.  The earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom are united through the most blessed sacrament of the altar.

Looking back at the Lord's prayer, with all of this in mind, we can see that "Thy Kingdom come" doesn't mean "let us into heaven".  It means, "Lord, come to us in the Eucharist".  The kingdom has been coming ever since the last supper, and it will keep coming every time we celebrate mass, over and over again.  Look in the book of revelation (chapters 4-6 in particular).  John's vision is a MASS!  This IS the Kingdom of God.