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The Kingdom Among Us: Ready in Suffering, Reconciled in Love

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The Kingdom Among Us: Ready in Suffering, Reconciled in Love In a world that scans the horizon for dramatic signs and distant saviors, Jesus quietly insists that the Kingdom of God is already here—among us and within us—inviting us to interior conversion, costly reconciliation, and readiness for His sudden return. Today we observe the Memorial of St. Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr, on Thursday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time. St. Josaphat Kuntsevych (c. 1580–1623), a Basilian monk and Ruthenian Catholic archbishop of Polotsk, gave his life working for the reunion of Eastern and Western Christians under the Union of Brest; he was martyred in Vitebsk while seeking to calm tensions, dying with words of peace and forgiveness. The readings form a coherent call to live the Kingdom now. In the First Reading (Philemon 7–20), the imprisoned Paul, moved by love, appeals to Philemon to receive the runaway slave Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brot...