The kingdom of God in our midst

January 12, 2015
Monday, 1st Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Heb 1:1-6
Gospel: Mk 1:14–20
After John was arrested, Jesus went into Galilee and began preaching the Good News of God. He said, “The time has come; the kingdom of God is at hand. Change your ways and believe the Good News.”
As Jesus was walking along the shore of Lake Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net in the lake, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” At once, they left their nets and followed him. Jesus went a little farther on and saw James and John, the sons of Zebedee; they were in their boat mending their nets. Immediately, Jesus called them and they followed him, leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
 Assimilated Life Experience)
In his work entitled Vom Sinn Des Christseins, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that when Jesus said, “This is the time of fulfillment; the kingdom of God is at hand”, he was presenting in a nut shell the whole history of Israel. Israel’s long history of struggle for freedom taught the people the disappointing lesson that human powers cannot save. “In the midst of this experience of a history that was full of disappointment, subjection, injustice, Israel had ardently reached out towards a kingdom whose king would no longer be simply a man but God himself, the true Lord of the world and history”. God addressed this longing with Jesus’ announcement that the kingdom of God was already at hand.
But while the people of Israel wanted God as their king, their idea of kingship and the salvation it would bring remained at the political level. They expected a king who had enough power to overthrow the Romans. This expectation colored their understanding of Jesus’ message.  Thus when Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand” they thought that finally the end of Roman domination over Israel had arrived. They did not understand that Jesus was actually inaugurating a culture of repentance.
Like the Jews we tend to call upon God to change certain structures in society.  Finding society still sinful we then accuse God as playing deaf to our pleadings. No, God is not deaf! The problem is on our side.
We need to change our hearts first if we want to dismantle these sinful structures.  Let’s reorient our hearts first so that as Cardinal Ratzinger described what had become of Israel later, we’d also become a people “ardently reaching out towards a kingdom whose king would no longer be simply a man but God himself, the true Lord of the world and history”. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M. Email:[email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.

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