There is something wonderfully awkward about the Pharisees’ question today.
They ask Jesus: “When is the Kingdom of God coming?”
And the Kingdom of God is standing in front of them.
That is quite an achievement.
They have gone looking for the Kingdom and managed to interview the King without recognising Him.
Jesus tells them:
“The Kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed.”
In other words, stop looking for fireworks.
“Look here!” “Look there!”
Jesus says: Do not go.
Human beings love that sort of thing.
Tell us Christ is present in the Mass, and we become strangely calm.
Tell us somebody has discovered a secret prophecy and suddenly everyone has internet access.
Another apparition. Another prediction.
Another one who has calculated the end of the world.
It is remarkable how often the end of the world requires a subscription.
Jesus says when He finally comes in glory, nobody will need directions.
It will be like lightning across the sky.
You will not need someone saying, “Apparently the Messiah is just outside Wolverhampton.”
Everybody will know.
But then comes the important line:
“First He must suffer greatly and be rejected.”
That is how the Kingdom works now.
Not spectacle. The Cross.
And that takes us straight to Onesimus.
He has wronged Philemon.
Now Paul sends him back.
Imagine the walk.
Every step brings him closer to a door he is not sure will open.
Then Philemon reads Paul’s letter:
“If he has wronged you, or owes you anything, charge it to me.”
Paul does not deny the debt.
He takes it.
Then he says: “Receive him as you would receive me.”
That is Christianity compressed into a few lines.
A guilty man comes home. A debt stands against him.
Someone else says: Put it on me. That is the Cross.
And if Philemon opens that door and receives Onesimus as a brother, nothing spectacular happens outside.
No thunder. No angels visible over the roof.
But the Kingdom of God has entered the house.
Christ now rules where resentment ruled before.
Saint Josaphat faced the same thing on a much larger scale.
He lived among Christians who had been divided for so long that division had started to look respectable.
Leave a wound long enough and eventually somebody calls it tradition.
Josaphat would not.
He was Eastern in worship and spirituality, and Catholic in communion.
He believed Christ meant it when He prayed that His Church should be one.
He worked for that unity. And he was killed for it.
The man who preached communion was murdered by division.
To the world, failure. Of course, the cross looked like failure too.
That is why we must be careful not to despise the ordinary.
Another Mass.
Another Gospel.
Another homily.
The same altar.
The same Christ.
We become familiar with holy things and start imagining that God must be somewhere more interesting.
Yet the Pharisees had God standing in front of them and still asked when He was going to arrive.
That should make us nervous.
One day the lightning will flash.
Christ will be obvious.
Until then, He comes quietly.
The real danger is not that Christ has failed to come.
It is that He has been here all along—
and we have become too used to Him to notice.
