“Happy are those who live in your house, continually singing your praise!
Happy the pilgrims whom you strengthen, to make the ascent to you” (Psalm 84, 5-6)
The Kingdom of God is like...
"But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness..."
Mt 6, 25 - 34
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“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?
Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?
Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wildflowers grow. They do not work or spin.
But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was clothed like one of them.
If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?
So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’
All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.
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God’s kingdom is experienced in the present, in the companionship with Jesus when the sick are healed and the lost are found; where people who are despised are accepted; where people who have lost hope come to life again and regain their joy and youthfulness of spirit. There the Kingdom of God begins. It is experienced in the present and this experience strengthens our hope for its coming in its fullness. We look forward to a future in which God will restore everything and put everything to rights and gather everything into his Kingdom. This is our great hope, a hope which encompasses all our little hopes. As St Peter put it in his letter:
"In accordance with his promise, we wait for a new heaven
and a new earth where righteousness is at home.”
Our hope is for a world completely remade, a world transfigured by the love of God and full of God’s glory so that God will be all in all.
Reflections:
If you were asked for signs of Christ's presence and the Kingdom of God, what would you point to?
What difficulties do you experience in treating all the people you meet as a brother or sister? What joys and challenges has your Christian faith brought to your life?
Do you experience your faith as something positive? (Faithful Pilgrim)
What is love?
God’s kingdom is love. It is a sensitivity to every portion of reality within you and without along with a wholehearted response to that reality. It means to be sensitive to life, to things, to persons; it means to feel for everything and everyone to the exclusion of nothing and no one.
Sometimes you will embrace that reality, sometimes you will attack it, sometimes you will ignore it, and other times, you will give it your fullest attention. But, always, you will respond—not from need but from sensitivity.
It is said that love is blind. But, is it? Actually, nothing on earth is as clear-sighted as love. The thing that is blind is not love but attachment. And what is attachment? Again, it is a need, a clinging that blunts your sensitivity, a drug that clouds your perception. That is why, as long as you have the slightest attachment for anything or any person, love cannot be born. For love is sensitivity, and sensitivity that is impaired even in the slightest degree is sensitivity destroyed. One must brave the stormy seas of attachments if one is to arrive at the land of love.