Thursday December 14th: Ready to storm the Kingdom of heaven!

“And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven has been subjected to violence, and the violent take it by force.”

Matthew 11:11-15

For a long time, it baffled me to even think of the Kingdom of Heaven suffering violence and violent people taking it by force. What? There too? I thought this craziness was only happening here on Earth. Of course, this was me visualizing this happening literally and being totally appalled.
Thank God after some bible study and research I got a clearer picture of what is being said. One website, Catholic Answers, (https://www.catholic.com/qa/), explained that this talk of “violence” was just a figure of speech emphasizing the number of persons who were so moved by the preaching of John and Jesus that their level of enthusiasm and ‘gusto’ as they sought after the Kingdom of heaven was likened to a war – a violent force. They didn’t just come halfheartedly every week to Mass, being distracted for half of it. No, they had a real encounter with God and hungered for the kingdom of Heaven.
How exciting! I could only pray that as we journey through Advent, we too become more excited and more zealous to follow Jesus and take the kingdom of heaven by storm.