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No images? Click here Richard Rohr's Daily MeditationFrom the Center for Action and Contemplation Week Forty-six Jesus and the Reign of GodThe Reign of God Jesus announced, lived, and inaugurated for history a new social order. He called it the Reign or Kingdom of God and it became the guiding image of his entire ministry. The Reign of God is the subject of Jesus’ inaugural address (see Mark 1:15, Matthew 4:17, and Luke 4:14–30), his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), and the majority of his parables. Once this guiding vision of God’s will became clear to Jesus, which seems to have happened when he was about thirty and alone in the desert, everything else came into perspective. In fact, Matthew’s Gospel says, “From then onwards” (4:17), Jesus began to preach. In order to explain this concept, it may be helpful to first say what it is not: the “Kingdom” is not synonymous with heaven. Many Christians have mistakenly thought that the Reign of God is “eternal life,” or where we go after we die. That idea is disproven by Jesus’ own prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). “Thy Kingdom come” means very clearly that God’s realm is something that enters into this world, or, as Jesus puts it, “is close at hand” (Matthew 10:7). We shouldn’t project it into another world. What we discover in the New Testament, especially in Matthew’s Gospel, is that the Kingdom of God is a new world order, a new age, a promised hope begun in the teaching and ministry of Jesus—and continued in us. I think of the Kingdom of God as the Really Real (with two capital Rs). That experience of the Really Real—the “Kingdom” experience—is the heart of Jesus’ teaching. It’s Reality with a capital R, the very bottom line, the pattern-that-connects. It’s the goal of all true religion, the experience of the Absolute, the Eternal, what is. God gives us just enough tastes of God’s realm to believe in it and to want it more than anything. In the parables, Jesus never says the Kingdom is totally now or totally later. It’s always now-and-not-yet. When we live inside the Really Real, we live in a “threshold space” between this world and the next. We learn how to live between heaven and earth, one foot in both worlds, holding them precious together. We only have the first fruits of the Kingdom in this world, but we experience enough to know that it’s the only thing that will ever satisfy us. Once we have had the truth, half-truths do not satisfy us anymore. In its light, everything else is relative, even our own life. Gateway to Action & Contemplation: Prayer for Our Community: Listen to Fr. Richard read the prayer. Story from Our Community: Adapted from Richard Rohr with John Bookser Feister, Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount (Franciscan Media: 1996), 3–4, 29, 109–110, 111. Image credit: 芥子園畫傳 Mountainside View (detail of print from The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting), Juran (960–), China, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York. Forward to a Friend →Forward this email to a friend or family member that may find it meaningful. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up for the daily, weekly, or monthly meditations. Sign Up →News from the CACOneing: Order, Disorder, Reorder“Reorder moves us forward in a positive way, but then sets the stage for the patterns to continue all over again.” Read Richard Rohr's full article, “Include and Transcend,” in this new edition of Oneing, which brings together for the first time all five faculty members of the Center for Action and Contemplation. What Do We Do With Evil?Examine your notion of evil with a contemplative, nondual mind to reflect on ways we are complicit in social and systemic evil. In What Do We Do With Evil?, Richard Rohr challenges readers to look beyond individual moral failure to increase personal responsibility and promote human solidarity. Action & Contemplation2020 Daily Meditations ThemeWhat does God ask of us? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. —Micah 6:8 Franciscan Richard Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987 because he saw a deep need for the integration of both action and contemplation. If we pray but don’t act justly, our faith won’t bear fruit. And without contemplation, activists burn out and even well-intended actions can cause more harm than good. In today’s religious, environmental, and political climate our compassionate engagement is urgent and vital. In this year’s Daily Meditations, Father Richard helps us learn the dance of action and contemplation. Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time! 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Submit an inquiry here for additional assistance. Inspiration for this week's banner image: The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed which a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air can come and shelter in its branches. —Matthew 13:31–32 1705 Five Points Road SW Albuquerque, New Mexico 87105 USA Share Tweet Forward Unsubscribe |
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