The kingdom of God is among you–you who will make Jesus suffer greatly and reject him.
We have God with us and we reject God. This is how it always is. We are complex and contradictory. Think of the pacifists who lack peace, the justice advocates who treat the people around them unjustly. Think of pro-lifers so full of fury and judgment that you wonder why someone would want to be born into their world in the first place. An athlete who glorifies God with his or her body between the goalposts in the afternoon and poisons the same body later that night.
This, of course, is all of us. And yet, in ways lovely or hidden or charming or baffling, the kingdom of God is always among us. Which makes the question a simple one: what do we do about it?
—Joe Hoover, S.J. is a Jesuit brother writing and acting in New York. He serves as poetry editor of America magazine and also works at St. Ignatius Grammar School.