THE WORD
Phlm 7-20 / Lk 17,20-25
Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus said in reply, “The coming of the kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the kingdom of God is among you.”
Then he said to his disciples, “The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. There will be those who will say to you, ‘Look, there he is,’ (or) ‘Look, here he is.’ Do not go off, do not run in pursuit.
For just as lightning ashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But rst he must suffer greatly and be rejected by this generation.”
IN OTHER WORDS
I was once traveling inside a packed city train and noticed that a pair of pickpockets were carrying out one of their tested modus operandi. One would ask the victim a seemingly innocent question aimed to distract attention while the other would concentrate on extricating the wallet.
Many times, they get away with it. Like these impostors, the Pharisees posed one more question to Jesus but they would not get away with it easily. Since Jesus knew their real intentions he was quick to show them the aw of their question, which is, they were looking for signs of God’s kingdom in the wrong place. Jesus pointed out to them that discovering God’s kingdom was not a shallow search for some place out there but was instead a deeper act of searching for it inside each person’s hidden recesses. This different orientation reveals one of the novelties of the words of Jesus and it con rms the point that while we are a community of believers, faith is first a personal act. This act of believing in His Word cannot be done by others for us nor can we just ride on family or cultural traditions. Faith, to a certain extent, needs an “I” to make it to a beautiful “We”. That is why whenever the community renews the faith through the recitation of the Creed, we begin with the phrase. “I believe…” In other words, seek the LORD while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near (Is 55,6).
- Fr. Jun Castro, SVD | Mozambique
The Word in other words 2016
An annual project of Logos Publications, The WORD in Other Words Bible Diary contains daily scripture readings and reflections written by priest, brothers, and sisters of the three congregations founded by St. Arnold Janssen (the SVD, SSpS, and SSpSAP). It hopes to serve as a daily companion to readers who continually seek the correlation of the Word of God and human experience.
