THE WORD BECAME FLESH

Thursday of 32^nd week in Ordinary time, 2021

Wis 7:22b-8:1

Ps 119

Luke 17:20-25

Memorial of Martin of Tours, Bishop

...is among you

The teaching Jesus gives in the gospels is often in response to the questions that people ask, as is shown by today’s gospel reading. The Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God was to come. They want to know when God will come in power to claim his people and, indeed, the earth, as his own. The reply of Jesus might have given his questioners food for thought, ‘the kingdom of God is among you’. 

Jesus is saying to them, ‘Don’t just look to the future, look to the present’. We can all be tempted either to live in the past or to live in the future. Jesus calls on us to pay attention to the present, and, especially, to the signs of God’s' powerful activity in the present. God was powerfully working through Jesus, if only the Pharisees had eyes to see. God’s will was being done, God’s kingdom was coming, in and through all that Jesus was saying and doing. 

The same Jesus, now risen Lord, is working among us today, through his Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Whenever the Holy Spirit moves people to share in Jesus’ work in some way, there the kingdom of God is among us.

 The first reading says that Wisdom ‘passes into holy souls, and makes them friends of God. We can substitute ‘the Lord’ or ‘the Spirit’ for ‘Wisdom’. The Spirit of the Lord is always at work within us and among us moving us to make the Lord’s work a reality in our own time and place. That is true even of the times in which we live that can be so discouraging to people of faith. Jesus’ words remain true, ‘the kingdom of God is among you’. We need the eyes to see the ways God’s kingdom is among us and, also, the openness to the Lord’s Spirit prompting us to make the presence of God’s kingdom even more of a reality among us.

Let us pray: Lord Jesus Christ, may your kingdom come and may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

+Remain blessed