Video Transcript

Edmund Mitchell: Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Real and True Podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts, Edmund Mitchell.

Emily Mentock: And I’m your other co-host, Emily Mentock.

Edmund Mitchell: And today, we are just flying through the fourth pillar on prayer. We’re going to be talking about the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom Come.”

Emily Mentock: And the first three petitions of the Our Father; the Lord’s Prayer, talk about God, His name, His kingdom, and His will. And then the next four concern our needs. But today we’re going to be talking specifically about how to engage your parish community—whether as a parish leader or just as a member of the community and beyond—to bring God’s kingdom into the world that you’re placed in right there in your parish.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah When we’re evangelizing and catechizing on the Lord’s Prayer, I wonder if people listening to these episodes further into this pillar are like, “I’m just expecting more spiritual reflection.” And it’s really cool when you read this section of the Catechism, it’s talking a lot more about your real life; daily life and how we’re called to live this out in our prayer, but also in our lives. 

And so my hope for this episode was that we could encourage catechists, ministers, pastors to be thinking about the culture and the community that they’re building in which they’re teaching people to pray “Thy kingdom come.” 

So we’re trying to teach people what it means to follow Jesus and pray “Thy kingdom come,” but also we have to be creating communities where that’s reflected; where you feel like “I’m part of a community that’s bringing God’s kingdom to this part of the world.” And that’s exciting and attractive.

Emily Mentock: Right. So that we’re not just praying these words, but living out that prayer, which is going to transform your parish community if you do that. In this unit, we started in our Proclamation video looking at “Can you even imagine a perfect kingdom? What would a perfect kingdom look like?” And if that existed, of course you would want that to come about in the world. 

And then we got into “What did Jesus mean by this?” And what it means to actually pray “Thy kingdom come.” Words that I think a lot of us—it’s not vernacular language for most of us at least here in the U.S. Church—to say “Thy kingdom come” in the year 2025. And what does it actually mean to pray that?

And I think that the Catechism gives us some great quotes that address very directly what it means to pray. So I’m going to read one of them just to kick us off. Paragraph 2820: “By discernment according to the Spirit, Christians have to distinguish between the growth of the Reign of God and the progress of the culture and society in which they are involved. This distinction is not a separation. Man’s vocation to eternal life does not suppress, but actually reinforces, his duty to put into action in this world the energies and means received from the Creator to serve justice and peace.” 

So that is so important because it says directly, yes. When we’re praying “Thy kingdom come,” we are praying that God’s reign can come and rule our world and perfect everything and bring about fulfillment of His plan. But, hoping for that down the line does not take away at all—and in fact—reinforces how we live our daily lives, which is so important.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I’m thinking of a person who’s in their house at their dining room table praying, “God, your kingdom come,” but yet his neighbor is outside knocking on the door starving. Or he’s not maybe involved or actively trying to get rid of injustice in the world, or there are opportunities to get involved in local politics, or voting certain ways. And we’re just like, “We don’t want to do any of that. We want to just sit and pray.” And so it’s a both-and; that we have a duty to put into action energy. 

I love this language from the Catechism. We have the “duty to put into action in this world the energy and means received from the Creator to serve justice and peace.” So we can’t just—in the same way when we’re catechizing—we can’t just be saying, “Hey, you should pray for God’s kingdom to come here on earth, but our community; our parish is not involved in the community; does not care about the needs even of the parish members let alone the broader parish community.”

Emily Mentock: Yeah. I love that word “energies” as well. It’s a bit unexpected. It might be the only place that it would appear in the Catechism. I wish we had an expert to help us better understand that translation and what’s being communicated by it. But my interpretation of that is that it’s not just the means, it’s also how we do it. 

So yes, we can go out and do the works, but how are we doing the works? What is the tone and attitude and disposition and what does it really mean in every level—including our feelings and emotions and things like that—for us to bring God’s kingdom and do our best to live God’s kingdom here in our world today? So it is an interesting choice of words that maybe is worth pondering more or praying through.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I don’t have this in the notes here, but there’s this part also in this where it says “By a discernment according to the Spirit, Christians have to distinguish between the growth of the Reign of God and the progress of the culture and society in which they’re involved.” Precisely your point, which is we have to discern as Christians, “Sure, progress is good. But is this progress towards the kingdom of God? Or is it just man’s version of progress?” I really love that.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. I think about the recent document from the Vatican that came out just a couple months ago on artificial intelligence. When you are balancing right now in our world what is some of the most advanced progress that’s happening. In this technological development, that is one of the biggest things. 

And it’s our duty as Christians to be discerning, “Well, we’re not against progress. We support progress, but we do need to discern what is the right progress and what as Christians should we support as progress if our ultimate goal is to bring about God’s kingdom, not just human advancement.” And I think there’s a difference between human advancement and human flourishing.

Edmund Mitchell: I want to jump to this question I had heard once that was really challenging to kind of set up the context for the rest of what we’re going to talk about. But I heard someone say–and I think it was in the Protestant context, but it’s still true for Catholic churches. And the question was, “If your church disappeared tomorrow, besides Mass—and maybe some events or activities—how many people would actually be affected besides going to Mass and getting the Sacraments?” 

Which are wonderful, amazing things, but it was really challenging to think, “Man, does our parish community actually provide much to the community; to the city? Would anyone even notice if our parish disappeared?” 

And then the follow up question is: “Should it be that way? Should it be that the Catholic Church in whatever city”—in Denton, Texas— “does not provide anything to the local community? Not merely in a transactional way, but contributes in a positive way to the local community?” If no one would be affected, I feel like that’s a problem; other than they’d have to drive further to get to Mass. But if no one would be affected, I think that’s kind of a problem.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. That is a great question to ask and pray through as an individual serving in your parish. Again, whether you’re the Director of Evangelization and Catechesis or you’re just an individual in your parish, any way in which you are involved, you can make an impact. And so it’s important to be asking “What impact is our parish making?” I think that’s a really powerful question. 

I would encourage everybody to spend some time with that. Because if we are called to bring about the kingdom, of course heaven meets Earth in the Sacraments; in the Eucharist. That is so important. We are helping people get to heaven through having Sacraments available, but it’s very clear here in the Catechism that we’re not just waiting. We’re not just staying holy and staying in relationship with God; waiting for God to come again.

The Catechism says in paragraph 2818, “In the Lord’s Prayer, ‘thy kingdom come’ refers primarily to the final coming of the reign of God through Christ’s return. But, far from distracting the Church from her mission in this present world, this desire commits her to it all the more strongly.” And so our commitment to have a mission in this present world is to help people know the love of God; to hear the Good News. And that includes going beyond the walls of your Church where you have the sacraments and making an impact in your community.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I also remember the quote that God’s Church doesn’t have a mission in the sense of, “Oh, God’s Church has a mission statement.” It’s actually more accurate to say “God’s mission has a Church.” The mission is the overarching thing.

Emily Mentock: Yes.

Edmund Mitchell: And He’s put the Church here. And also, that your parish is the representation of God’s mission in that parish boundary. There’s no other parish in your parish boundary. I mean, maybe there are in some areas, but technically..

Emily Mentock: No, really, there shouldn’t be. In the Archdiocese of Detroit, we use the term “mission territory.” Your parish has a mission territory, so what are you doing to serve that mission territory?

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. So when I was thinking about this episode, I was thinking, “Okay, we have to be personally responsible for living this out ourselves when we’re teaching people the Lord’s Prayer and ‘Thy kingdom come.’ So what are ways that we can do that?” But then also those people who can impact the parish and what the parish does or doesn’t do and evolve. We also have to think about “How do we as a broader parish live that out?”

So maybe we can start talking about some of the practical ways we could start living this out. I was wondering if maybe we could share some experiences we’ve had or stories you know of parishes that have done some things really well.

Emily Mentock: Yeah, absolutely. There’s so many different things that a parish can do, but I think it’s always helpful to highlight some specific examples. So I think of my parish that I was part of in downtown Detroit when I was living there. And it was a parish that could have closed, but the archbishop made a decision to keep it open to continue serving in downtown Detroit; to continue having Mass there, but also to continue serving people in that neighborhood that “What would happen to them if that parish had closed?” 

And so of course, we had daily Mass, we had Adoration, we had Confession. We would have certain nights of the year— like when they did the Christmas tree lighting downtown—where we invite people to come and stop by in Adoration. We’d have Confession available, things like that.

But also, every single week we have what we called neighborhood services. Or Backpack Ministry, where we would do cookouts for—the phrase that we would use is “our friends on Washington Boulevard.” So people who are maybe in low-income housing who lived there on that street, because there were several developments of low-income housing. Or people who were experiencing houselessness who hung out there in that area. 

And so there were so many things that the parish would do—and continues to do to this day—that is directly serving the neighborhood; making sure that every member of our community knew about opportunities to get out and serve, even if they couldn’t commit to be the leader of the program; the regular volunteer. Always inviting people to be part of that, and always using the language that would point to “This is our community.”

And sometimes those folks would come to Mass also, and probably some of them never will. But I think what I really took away from that parish—and one of the things that made it special—is that there was always the sense that we were all called to be part of that mission that’s born from a sacramental life; animated through the Holy Spirit from a sacramental life, but to go out and be part of the neighborhood where we all lived. 

And I’m very grateful to have been part of that for some years. Now I’m back in Indiana, I have a different parish that’s also very large. It has a school, very family-oriented; very vibrant, but I’m finding new ways to get involved and to live that out. And taking some of these experiences that I’ve had from a kind of a unique parish situation in Detroit to discern what I want to give my time, talent, and treasure to here where I live now.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I love that because even just having the awareness that people in a community are going to have needs and do have needs, that even sometimes is a huge step. I’ve been involved in certain meetings with parishes where those things are—even if they are brought up–they’re like, “Well, we don’t have time for that.” 

And one of the examples I want to share is from my home parish growing up. And at least for me, I can get very quickly overwhelmed by this topic because it’s like, “Okay. Well if we’re going to help people in our city, that seems like a big task. Are we going to be able to help enough people? How do we make this effective?” When I was growing up, I went to a really small, mostly Spanish-speaking parish, very small budget; not very wealthy parish.

And to me, it was just a witness of how everyone was just aware of the families around them. So if you went to Mass at a certain time on Sunday, all the families around you knew when you weren’t there or would follow up with you before and after Mass; they were involved in our lives. Everyone was just kind of involved in each other’s lives. 

And there was one parishioner who on her own just started this food truck ministry thing where she had this big trailer, and it was just her and her husband for a while. And then it just kind of grew, and she just wanted to go serve the homeless in our community. And then also the pastor, Father Diaz—he was this five foot one Spanish man who was like a hundred years old, but still ran three miles every day.

But he would just show up at people’s houses, knock on the door, just “How are you doing?” Just walk in, “How are you doing?” Pray for them. He knew people’s needs. And I think that to me was a really powerful example of that. Everyone in the community wanted to reflect the kingdom—whether they would say it exactly that way—it was definitely a strong image that stuck with me the rest of my life. Now when I think of this phrase, I think of Resurrection Catholic Church.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. Oh, I love that. That reminds me of a story that I heard from another pastor. I don’t know the name of the parish he was at the time—but from a priest friend—that when he was first assigned to this parish—and he was kind of a young, enthusiastic priest—but sometimes that’s where the best ideas come from, right? He rented a van that could fit all of his parish staff in it; a 9-person; 12-person van or something like that. And they drove every street of their mission territory; their parish boundary.

Edmund Mitchell: Wow.

Emily Mentock: So he would say “This is who we serve. Yes, of course we’re serving the people who come in the pews, but they’re coming to us. But we can’t set out our three-year plan, or decide what programs to do, or discern what our Lenten mission theme is going to be, if we don’t know our mission territory.”

And I think that these ideas, there’s probably so many. And actually, if you’re listening to this podcast and you have an idea, we would love to hear it. Put it in the comments for other people; send it to us via email. We’d love to know more amazing ideas like this. But I think it’s so important to share them. And to the point of “Okay, well a lot of these are about serving the poor. Of course there’s more that a parish can do besides serving the poor.” 

But your parish, it’s okay for you to look at the neighborhood that you’re in and discern “Where is the area of greatest need?” Or “Where are volunteers going to respond the best to responding to that need?” And you can have sort of the charism of your parish.

So if you’re in an area where there’s a lot of people experiencing houselessness, that might be a good place to start. If you’re in an area that has a couple nursing homes down the street from your parish, caring for the sick and the lonely might be a good place to start. And looking always to the examples that Jesus modeled in His ministry; looking to what the Church has given to us as the works of mercy. These are ways that you should discern how your parish is called about to bring about God’s kingdom in the world.

Edmund Mitchell: I want to challenge every pastor and their staff to do that once a year. I love that. I think that it’s so easy to–in all of us—it’s so easy to get caught up in going up to the office and just forgetting what your parish boundary actually looks like. I’m thinking about how when I first moved to Grapevine, it seems like an upper-class; great, nice town or whatever. 

And then I noticed how many very low-income trailer park little areas are kind of tucked back behind. I don’t even know how to say this the right way, there’s a big lower-income population. It’s kind of sad; it’s always kind of tucked behind something and back up in somewhere.

And I remember—if I had stayed at the parish longer—wanting to do more for the community and for people that didn’t have as many opportunities. I’m also thinking about there was a Mormon church directly across the street from our church. And I remember when I first got to the parish, I was like, “Hey, I want to ask the pastor”—or whatever they call it—”I want to ask someone from their staff out to lunch.” 

And multiple people on the staff were like, “Oh, we don’t talk to them. We don’t connect with them or anything.” And I was like, “They’re literally our neighbor. They are literally the church next door.” And no one on staff knew anyone’s contact; didn’t know how to get in touch with them; didn’t even know when their office was open. I was like, “Man, we really need to.” 

So anyways, not to say that I’m some great person—because I fail at this all the time—but to literally look at your neighbor and literally look at your parish boundary, I think is a great start. At least an awareness of your parish boundary.

Emily Mentock: Yes, exactly. It’s a great place to start. Because to your point earlier, if we’re thinking about “How do we bring about God’s kingdom in the world?” It can be overwhelming. But I think it’s an important challenge for those people who are called to parish ministry—or who want to be leaders in their parish—to consider it beyond the level of “What am I called to do individually, but what are we called to do as a community?” Especially if you’re working through this part of the Lord’s Prayer to just help people better understand it. 

And that’s where—going back to the Catechism quote 2820 “By a discernment according to the Spirit, Christians have to distinguish…” So it is something you’re meant to discern. If you have a massive parish with an unlimited budget and you can check every single work of mercy—corporal and spiritual—off with your list of ministries, praise God for that. But most of us don’t have that. 

And that’s why with discernment according to the Spirit, ask the Holy Spirit, “How do you want us to do this? How are you calling us to bring about your kingdom as a parish community right now?” And that is a perfect place to start.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. And to give even more low-cost, low-time required ideas related to this awareness. Are you even aware of any initiatives that your community or your city are doing that do reflect God’s kingdom? Is the city coming up on a vote on something, and they voted in in such a way that it values the dignity of the human person or takes care of the vulnerable? Are you even saying that you support and are excited about a decision that got passed by the school system or a change in after-school activity scheduling to value families?

 It takes no time; it takes very little time for either the pastor or a youth minister or someone to publicly say, “I think this is a really good thing that other organizations besides ours is doing. And we want to promote this and applaud this. This is such a great thing.” 

So that, and then our prayers. Are we aware of the city’s needs; of our community’s needs that they might not be there to submit a petition for the next Mass intentions? You know; that part of the Mass. They might not be there to do that, but are we aware of the community needs and even the people we’re catechizing in class? Are we aware of their needs and things that they need prayer for? I think those two things could be really powerful.

Emily Mentock: Yeah, exactly. We would talk all the time there’s always the feedback that in classroom the kids or—adults even—want the content that we’re teaching—that we’re catechizing them with—to be relevant to their lives. And knowing about those things; you can make those connections, is so important. 

And I love that what you’re saying about it starts with even awareness because we’re in the pillar of prayer. We’re not in the pillar of social justice right now. We’re in the pillar of prayer. But having this awareness actually makes your prayer stronger and more specific. 

So if you start to think about “What are the ways that we are called to bring about God’s kingdom in our community or in my own life?” Or whatever it is. The next time you pray the Our Father and you get to that line, hopefully you’re thinking about those things. That when you’re saying “Thy kingdom come,” you’re thinking about not just in general the second coming, although that’s the primary thing we’re praying for.

You’re also thinking about the specific ways—and letting the Holy Spirit animate your prayer with those specific ways—that in your little circle of influence, you’re going to bring about the kingdom, and asking God to give you the grace to do that.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. And Jesus teaches that the kingdom of God belongs to the poor, the lowly, the humble, the meek. And so I’m thinking about a story where a parish minister—I think it was a diocesan director, but he said he did this at his parish too. He would put this big whiteboard outside of his office and it said “Prayer Intentions” and anyone could just go up. And it was for the week. And so it was prayer intentions for the week. And he would wipe it off every week; every Monday. And staff members—you could write your name or you could not write your name—and things would end up there. And he would pray for that. 

And I’m thinking that if you’re teaching OCIA, or if you’re a youth minister, or even the parish staff, to put something somewhere to visually see, “Hey, this is a place where the poor and needy and those who have prayer petitions, they’re respected and there’s awareness of it, and we want to pray for that. We all are in need in some way, and here’s a visual representation that reminds us we need to pray for those in need, and here are their needs.” 

I think that is a really cool way to start living that out. And again, it doesn’t take a ton of time to just give that opportunity for people to put their petitions up.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. I think we could spend a lot of time going through different ideas and examples for ways to bring this about. But I think it starts with awareness. It starts with discernment, and then going out and putting that into action. And I’m really grateful that you’ve had experiences of seeing this in action from your parish ministry. 

I feel grateful I’ve been part of this. And hopefully that when we’re teaching on prayer, we’re also teaching people to live that out. You had a powerful story that you wanted to share also that is relevant to this example.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. There was a man who moved to our town alone. He had recently been divorced. He was older—I think he was over 50; wasn’t very Catholic. He was raised Catholic but wasn’t practicing. He happened to be at Mass where I invited people who were in the back pew to come to this event called “Discovering Christ.” 

Well, he showed up at the volunteer training, but he didn’t realize he wasn’t supposed to come to the volunteer training. I think he got confused on the calendar. We didn’t find that out for weeks when he finally raised his hand and was like, “I’ve never met Jesus. I don’t know what I’m doing here.” 

A few weeks later, he got in a car accident; really badly injured—I think his neck was broken. And over the course of I think that first week, there was at least two volunteers from our team constantly at the hospital visiting with him.

They would trade off. The first day he was there—as I was going up the elevator—someone else was coming on to leave. The whole volunteer team just showed up for him, and prayed with him, brought him food, hung out with him. 

Later, he got more involved in the faith, and it was a really profound experience for him. And one of the things he said about that experience was that his girlfriend at the time was not Catholic—and she was just in between visitors showing up—was just like, “What is going on? Is this an organized ministry of the church? Are we on some list?” And the volunteers just told this guy, “No. God put you in our life for a reason. We don’t know why you came to the leader training, but God put you in our life and you’re in need. And so we just have been doing this.”

And his girlfriend later joined the Church; came into the Church. And he years later stood up at a “Discovering Christ” and told this story and was like “Discovering Christ changed my life before I even showed up to the program.” 

And it was people having an awareness of “We want to bring God’s kingdom to the hospital, to the ER; to wherever people are that are in need.” And it was really powerful for him; very moving because he had never seen the Gospel lived out like that. And seeing people actually really care about people in need, feeling that the Church is present; is going to show up for them.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. Wow. That is a really, really powerful story. And it’s a small story of putting your faith into action, but the way that you’re doing it as a community–I think—is what we really wanted to tie into this unit too. 

So that when we’re teaching people “Thy kingdom come” and we’re praying that every Sunday at Mass, we are also understanding that by asking God for that to happen, God is asking us to go out and do that work as well; to be the hands animated by the Spirit to carry out that mission.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. And I just want to say none of that I can take credit for. I didn’t organize going to the hospital. I didn’t think about that. I think the only thing I might have contributed or been a part of—I did want to connect this–is that at the end of every leadership training, we would go around and spend more time than usual asking people to share prayer intentions. “What’s going on in your life and you need prayer intentions for?” 

That’s the only thing. It wasn’t until this episode that I was thinking, “I wonder if that contributed to this spirit of ‘We take care of one another, and we know one another’s needs, and what is going on in each other’s lives.’”

And the program’s training was about hospitality, but I wonder—just to bring it all back to prayer—the fact that we were even praying for each other’s needs raised our awareness that we should show up for each other’s needs. We’re the ones we have in each other’s lives.

Emily Mentock: Yeah. Always comes back to prayer. That’s the most important thing. And it shows relationship when you’re praying together, not just doing these acts; these works together. Because if you get this program launched, then you go out and do the work, but you’re not praying together, then you’re missing half the point of why we’re doing this work as a community to pray together and pray for each other and the people that we’re serving.

Because prayer is what unites us all. So I think that is so important. 

Thank you so much for tuning in for another episode of The Real + True podcast. We really would love to have your feedback about this episode in particular; these ideas you have for living out “Thy kingdom come” in your parish, but also for the podcast in general. So feel free to drop a comment and subscribe to the podcast on our YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcast. 

You can always tune in next time for more discussions about unlocking the beauty and truth of the Catechism for the modern world, especially for you as a catechist. We want to put innovative, awesome resources in your hands so that you can help people encounter the pulsating heart of the Catechism: Jesus Christ. See you next time!