Fr Mark Schultz
Dear Friend,
I was recently watching an episode of a TV series about a family who owns and operates a convenience store in Toronto. The daughter in the family is studying photography in college, and one of her classmates approaches her father in the store about sitting for a portrait. The father is suspicious at first and says no, but on seeing what a talented portrait photographer his daughter’s friend is, the father insists on having his portrait taken in the shop. On the day, though, the photographer can’t get any good pictures...because the father is nervous and keeps posing and mugging artificially. So they agree: in order to capture a more natural portrait, the photographer will hide on a day and at a time of which the father is unaware and, after observing when the father has his guard down or is relaxed, that’s when the photographer will take the picture...
...except, the father insists on not relaxing. Ever. At all. He’s convinced that the only way his portrait is going to turn out well is if he’s manically smiling and properly posed. So he smiles and poses all day, constantly, furtively, compulsively grimacing and glancing over his shoulder to see if the photographer is there to take the “perfect” shot. What he quickly discovers, though, it’s that all that furtive anxiety is exhausting. And in a brief moment when, tired with the constant strain of performing who he thinks he is, he rests, and reveals something honest…and unbeknownst to him, his daughter takes the photo.
In our Office Gospel today, Our Lord responds to those who ask about when the Kingdom is coming, saying: “The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” There are a couple translation choices here that I think need a little clarifying. The word translated “things that can be observed” could, I think, more accurately be rendered as “careful observation”: the word carries with it a sense of militant attention, the kind of attention you have when you’re guarding something, or trying to control something. The word translated “among you” really ought to be rendered “within you.” "Among you" isn’t bad theology (it locates the Kingdom as a thing discoverable in right relationship with others and certainly isn’t a wrong translation), but “within you” has other very important consequences in context…
Because here’s what Our Lord is saying, “The coming of the Kingdom is not a matter of your anxious watching, your obsessive observation, your militant policing. The Kingdom isn’t coming because you’re anxious about it. You can’t control it! Stop trying! And relax! Breathe! Yes! Let go! Not because the Kingdom won’t hold you accountable (it will!), but because your anxiety is leading you into a place where you perform what you think the Kingdom requires of you, but you don’t allow the grace of the Kingdom to transform your life. Your ‘goodness’ is in danger of being artificial, rather than being who and what you honestly are. Because the secret is: the Kingdom is already here. And it’s within you. It doesn’t start out there, it starts within—with a conversion of life, with the justification that comes by grace through faith, with the reception of the grace that sanctifies and transforms your life. The Kingdom will be visible in you or not at all…but if the Kingdom lives in you, the world cannot stay the same, it will not stay the same. Because the Kingdom alive in you, the Kingdom of justice and love and walking humbly with God, will transform the world in and through you.”
Beloved Friend! When we pray that God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, we’re not praying for a distant thing to arrive at a distant point in time, far removed from us: we’re praying for a reality of love to live in and through us. Let us relax more fully into that love, and discover, there, in love’s arms, who and what we really are!
Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+