The hidden kingdom: Sunday, May 13

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Not long ago I was driving to a meeting in an unfamiliar town on a rainy Saturday morning. I stopped at a red light and noticed some kind of protest happening on the street corner--a group of people wearing sandwich boards with huge lettering. Some signs said, “Stop Abortion,” while others read, “Pro-choice”--both interspersed with harsher messages. These passionately opposing individuals stood amidst one another, laughing and talking and drinking steaming coffee in the cold rain. Nearby, two people wearing opposing signs embraced. Ah, I thought, see how they love one another.

Here is the holy city adorned as a bride for her husband. A new heaven, a new earth, breaking forth through the rain, hidden as a sign on the street corner. See how they love one another--passionately enough to embrace this moment of reconciliation and still more passionately to continue their opposing struggles on behalf of others. Living in one sphere they lean into a second, striving toward the kingdom of heaven that remains hidden behind the threshold of the human struggle. One world is a feast, the other a fast.

St. Augustine in his commentary on Psalm 148 describes these two realms: