Jesus, when can we expect the Kingdom of God to come? What is this Kingdom of God that You talked about? We don’t understand it. Can we see it? Maybe we just need to look around us. People still ask that question and Jesus is still telling us that it is among us. No one will announce its coming - because it is right before your eyes.
People are running here and there, searching, running after the latest private revelation and yet we hear Jesus tell us that it is among us. The Kingdom of God is to be found in people, in the people of God the church.
Look around and you will discover the Kingdom of God, just as people described for us today in the reading from the Book of Wisdom.
The world that we are currently living in has many of the shortcomings that existed when Jesus walked among us.
But look around and you will see the Kingdom of God - people who are holy, and unique, and who possess the Spirt of Wisdom. They are the effusion of the glory of God.
The saint we celebrate today, Martin of Tours was that. A military man with the Roman army, he came to realize that what he was being asked to do was incompatible with being a Christian. When allowed to leave, he settled in France and entered a monastery in France and later was elected Bishop of Tours.
On this Veterans Day, my thoughts turn to a recent visit to the cemetery where my brother religious are buried. Countless American flags flutter over the graves of priests and brothers who returned from World War II, and like Martin of Tours, experienced war and its consequences. They reached out to God, and God reached out to them.
We heard Jesus tell us today not to run off in pursuit, searching for God’s presence where it is not to be found, instead search for it among us.
In the gospel Jesus spoke of how he would suffer and be rejected by his generation. The women who went in search of him found an empty tomb.
He is among us now. Just look around.
