God - close to us and amidst us!

WORD 2day: Thursday, 32nd week in Ordinary time

November 14, 2019 : Wisdom 7:22 -8:1; Luke 17: 20-25

The Reign of God is within you! (Lk 17:21) - this was the statement, they say, that provoked, sustained and gave meaning to Liberation theology in the 1970s. Not just that. This was also the teaching that took Jesus to the cross. What is so provocative about it? 

To answer that question from the Gospel, we need to listen to the first reading and the psalm. They speak of the Wisdom of the Lord, the Word of God that abides with us, the Lord who has come to live amidst us, the whole grace of incarnation. It is all about the Indwelling Spirit, who is the power of God almighty, the concrete expression of God's wisdom, the continued existence of God's Word amidst us.

Jesus' proclamation of the arrival of the Reign, or that of the year of the Lord and the claim about the fulfilment of the Word (Lk 4:19,21) were looked at as an offence, because Jesus underlined the proximity, the closeness of God to human beings. When God was thought of as a distant judge who would judge everything and everyone on the last day, Jesus spoke of God in terms of our daily life and ordinary choices.

Even today, if we choose to, we can see God as some one far, distant, removed and isolated. But if we are sincerely observant, we can feel the presence of the Word, the Wisdom, the Incarnate Son walking beside us and we can feel God close and intimate to us because, "God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom" (Wis 7:28), says the first reading. 

Let us make a concrete effort to feel God close to us and right amidst us!