3 October 2019
Thursday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time
The gospel reading points to an issue that sometimes confuses. Jesus tells his disciples to preach the message that the Kingdom of God is at hand and it was for this reason that the early church thought that Jesus’ return would be imminent. Yet, the kingdom in its fullness seems to be a bit further in the distance than many in the early church would have imagined. So what does it mean when we speak of the Kingdom being here, yet we still wait for the fullness of the Kingdom of Christ at the end of time? When we pray in the Our Father that the Kingdom should be on earth as it is in heaven, we petition God to make us aware of the presence of God so that we may join in Christ’s mission, as Christians, to bring this Kingdom into greater visibility. Following the recommendation of Ignatius who asks us to “Find God in All things” by finding the evidence of God and identifying this presence to ourselves and others we do our part in bringing the Kingdom into fullness. This also means we need to identify those parts of our lives and actions of society that discourage the presence of the Kingdom of God. This at times takes great courage and sometimes ridicule. Moving towards the wholeness God intends for us comes always with a struggle.