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Office Of Readings | Week 34, Sunday, Ordinary Time | Christ The King | A Reading From The Book Of Origen On Prayer | Thy Kingdom Come
‘Thy Kingdom Come.’
Origen reflects on the petition ‘Thy kingdom come’ as a request not for an external spectacle but for an interior reality. He begins with Christ’s teaching that the kingdom does not arrive with visible signs, for it is ‘within us and in our hearts’. With this, Origen redirects attention away from expectation of outward change and towards the inner life in which God’s reign is established through grace. The prayer for the kingdom is therefore a prayer for transformation: that God’s life may take root, grow, and reach its intended fullness within the believer.
Origen describes the saint as one in whom God already reigns. The image he uses is striking: God dwells within the soul as in a well-ordered city, and Christ reigns there with the Father. The believer who prays this petition prays for this order, harmony, and obedience to be perfected. Origen links this to the eschatological hope expressed by Saint Paul: when all things are made subject to Christ, he will hand over the kingdom to the Father, ‘that God may be all in all’. Thus the interior coming of the kingdom is a participation in the wider movement by which God brings all creation to its completion in Himself.
Prayer is therefore continual, rooted in desire shaped by the Word. As the heart is formed by divine longing, the petition ‘thy kingdom come’ becomes not formula but expression of the soul’s deepest orientation. Origen pauses to note the incompatibility between God’s kingdom and the reign of sin. He uses the Pauline contrasts—light versus darkness, Christ versus Belial—to stress that two opposing orders cannot coexist within one person. If the kingdom is to come in the believer, then sin cannot be allowed to exercise dominion.
The chosen imagery moves from moral struggle to renewed creation. Origen urges the ‘mortification’ of the earthly self and the fruitfulness of the Spirit, so that the soul becomes a ‘spiritual garden of Eden’. This evokes both Genesis and the prophetic promise of restoration: God walking once again in a place where He delights to dwell. Christ reigning within the soul at the Father’s right hand mirrors the heavenly pattern; the believer becomes a living temple where divine authority brings order to the inner life.
Origen extends this to the defeat of spiritual enemies within. The subjection of these enemies culminates in the destruction of death, echoing Paul’s proclamation of victory in 1 Corinthians. The overcoming of death is portrayed not as a distant future event but as something that can be anticipated in the present through holiness. When corruptibility is ‘clothed with incorruption’, even now, the believer shares in the life of the resurrection and in the blessings of regeneration.
Origen presents the petition for the kingdom as a request for God to take full possession of the soul. The transformation he describes is gradual yet decisive: a movement from disorder to peace, from sin’s dominion to God’s rule, from mortality to participation in divine life. The coming of the kingdom is thus the ongoing work of grace within the believer and, ultimately, the state in which God is ‘all in all’.
Christ The King | A Reading From The Book Of Origen On Prayer | Thy Kingdom Come
The coming of the kingdom of God, says our Lord and Saviour, does not admit of observation, and there will be no-one to say ‘Look here! Look there!’ For the kingdom of God is within us and in our hearts. And so it is beyond doubt that whoever prays for the coming of the kingdom of God within himself is praying rightly, praying for the kingdom to dawn in him, bear fruit and reach perfection. For God reigns in every saint, and every saint obeys God’s spiritual laws — God, who dwells in him just as he dwells in any well-ordered city. The Father is present in him and in his soul Christ reigns alongside the Father, as it is said: We will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
Therefore, as we continue to move forward without ceasing, the kingdom of God within us will reach its perfection in us at that moment when the saying in the Apostle is fulfilled, that Christ, his enemies all made subject to him, shall deliver the kingdom to God the Father that God may be all in all.
For this reason let us pray without ceasing, our souls filled by a desire made divine by the Word himself. Let us pray to our Father in heaven: hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come.
There is something important that we need to understand about the kingdom of God: just as righteousness has no partnership with lawlessness, just as light has nothing in common with darkness and Christ has no agreement with Belial, so the kingdom of God and a kingdom of sin cannot co-exist.
So if we want God to reign within us, on no account may sin rule in our mortal body but let us mortify our earthly bodies and let us be made fruitful by the Spirit. Then we will be a spiritual garden of Eden for God to walk in. God will rule in us with Christ who will be seated in us on the right hand of God — God, the spiritual power that we pray to receive — until he makes his enemies (who are within us) into his footstool and pours out on us all authority, all power, all strength.
This can happen to any one of us and death, the last enemy may be destroyed, so that in us Christ says Death, where is your sting? Death, where is your victory? So let our corruptibility be clothed today with holiness and incorruption. With Death dead, let our mortality be cloaked in the Father’s immortality. With God ruling in us, let us be immersed in the blessings of regeneration and resurrection.
Christian Prayer With Jesus
Lord our God,
you have taught us to pray for the coming of your kingdom.
Plant within us the rule of your grace;
drive out all that resists your will;
and make our hearts the dwelling-place of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Let Christ reign within us until every enemy is subdued,
every sin brought low,
and every desire ordered to your glory.
Clothe our mortality with your immortality,
and grant that, renewed by your Spirit,
we may become a garden where you delight to walk,
a temple where your presence rests,
and a people who live already the life of the resurrection.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Glossary Of Christian Terms
Kingdom of God – Not only the future reign of God at the end of time, but his present rule in the hearts and lives of believers. According to Origen, the kingdom ‘comes’ whenever the soul is transformed by grace.
Reign of Sin – A biblical expression (cf. Romans 6) describing the inner dominion of disordered desires and sinful habits. Origen insists that this dominion cannot coexist with the reign of God.
Mortification – The spiritual practice of putting to death sinful impulses or ‘the earthly self.’ It does not mean harm to the body but the renunciation of passions that lead away from God.
Regeneration – The new birth given through Christ, especially associated with baptism, by which the believer becomes a new creation and receives the life of grace.
Resurrection (Spiritual and Bodily) – Origen distinguishes between the spiritual resurrection (conversion and renewal in this life) and the bodily resurrection at the end of time. Those who undergo the first will be prepared for the second.
‘God all in all’ – A phrase from 1 Corinthians 15:28 describing the final state of creation in which God’s presence, authority, and glory permeate all things without resistance.
Belial – A biblical name symbolising evil or worthlessness, used by St Paul (2 Corinthians 6:15) to illustrate the total opposition between Christ and sin.
Garden of Eden (Spiritual) – Used allegorically by Origen to describe the soul renewed by grace, restored to harmony, purity, and intimacy with God.
Incorruption / Immortality – Qualities belonging to the life of God and gifted to believers. Origen speaks of the soul’s present participation in incorruption through holiness, anticipating the final victory over death.
Indwelling – The presence of the Father and the Son within the soul (cf. John 14:23). For Origen, this is the essence of the kingdom coming within us.
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