Good News Reflection
Thursday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time
November 16, 2006
Jesus is coming! Jesus is here!
[en Español: http://gnm.org/ReflexionesDiarias]
Today's Readings:
Philemon 7-20
Ps 146:7-10 (with 5a)
Luke 17:20-25
http://www.usccb.org/nab/111606.shtml
Reflection:
Many people are looking for signs that the Second Coming of Christ is going to happen soon. Tired of suffering, we hope that God's total victory will hurry up and arrive. We want evil-doers to get punished and removed from our lives and even from our thoughts. We want Satan's butt to get kicked the hell off of earth.
Today, Jesus is telling us the same thing he told the Pharisees in today's Gospel passage: God's reign is already here!
The "end times" were initiated in the resurrection of Jesus and began when the Holy Spirit descended upon the earth and came to live in all believers. It's a time of mercy, forgiveness and love, a time of overcoming evil with holiness. In salvation history, it's the time when we are the Body of Christ on earth and we do what Jesus did, through the Holy Spirit, to take others to heaven with us.
So why are we waiting for Jesus to show up? We need to live as if his Second Coming is going to happen tomorrow, but instead of watching for signs that Jesus is going to soon rescue the world from evil, we're supposed to be living with Jesus now, finding him in the people of our Christian community and being him for those who are afflicted by evil.
This is the point God makes in today's first reading. This short letter from Saint Paul was written to a believer named Philemon whose slave, Onesimus, had cheated him and run away. The name "Onesimus" means "useful", and Paul took advantage of that to tell Philemon that the formerly useless slave was to be respected and compassionately reinstated in his job.
How many Onesimuses do we know? These are the persons who seem worthless to us, and the people who have cheated us. We are to treat everyone as if we are meeting Jesus himself. Saint Francis of Assisi genuflected at each person he encountered. We could at least smile!
The reign of God comes to us every day through every person we meet. If we bring Jesus into the encounter, the occasion becomes sanctified, holy. And isn't it interesting that God likes to speak to us through those who seem useless and stupid. (He enjoys irony.)
"Welcome him as you would me" is Paul's invitation to Philemon. He is speaking the words of Christ himself, who says in Matthew 25 that what we do to the least, the very least of all people, we do to him. We must train ourselves to recognize the reign of God where we least expect to find it!
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© 2006 by Terry A. Modica