August 23, 2025 // Perspective
God’s Kingdom Awaits: Humans Can Accept It or Reject It
21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Book of Isaiah provides the first reading for this weekend. Isaiah is a fascinating book of Scripture. It covers a long period of Hebrew history. Its early chapters deal with events and conditions in the southern Hebrew kingdom of Judah, before the kingdom’s
conquest by the mighty Babylonian army.
Then, as the book progresses, it tells of the plight of the Hebrews taken to Babylon, the imperial capital, where they and their descendants languished for four generations.
At last, the Hebrews were allowed to return, but the homeland that they found was hardly the “land flowing with milk and honey.” It was sterile, lifeless, and bleak. It must have been difficult not to succumb to cynicism or outright rejection of God. Why did God lead them to this awful place after all they had experienced in Babylon? Was this God’s confirmation of the Covenant?
This dreary, despondent situation is evident as we hear the words of the book read in this weekend’s Liturgy of the Word, but the prophet unceasingly called the people to reaffirm their devotion to God. God will rescue them.
For its second reading, the Church presents the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the late part of the first century A.D., when this epistle was composed, the plight of the Jews was anything but good. In A.D. 70, the Jews rebelled against the Romans, and the Jews paid a dreadful price for their audacity.
Things were as bad as they were in the days of the last part of Isaiah, from which came the reading heard earlier.
Nevertheless, as other prophets so often had encouraged the people in the past, the author of Hebrews assured the people of the early Church that God would protect them, despite all their trials and woes, and lead them to life eternal.
St. Luke’s Gospel furnishes the last reading. It is a somber reading, indeed a warning, but also a lesson. This world is impermanent. God lives and reigns in an eternal kingdom. He is everlasting, unchanging.
Jesus holds the key to the gate of God’s kingdom, but entry into the kingdom is possible only for those who are faithful to God.
Reflection
For several weeks, the Church, either directly or indirectly, has taught us in the weekend readings at Mass that earthly life is not the final experience of living for humans because earthly life will pass.
Human existence is transitory. Earthly life will end. Then inevitably will come either eternal joy in heaven, or hopelessly unending despair in hell.
God offers us every opportunity, and every aid, to enable us to reach eternal life in heaven. He could show us no greater love than to give us Jesus as our Redeemer and companion as we move through earthly existence. The Lord, one with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, in the eternity and power of God, is with us, forgiving us, strengthening us, guiding us, restoring us, before finally seating us at the banquet table of heaven.
Still, humans ignore or outright reject God’s love, so lavishly given in Jesus.
Saints or sinners, humans create their own destiny. Will they live in eternal joy with God? Or will they live without God in everlasting despair and pain? The choice belongs to them.
Therefore, each of us, individually, has a choice. By our faithfulness, or by our sin, we select the eternity in which we shall be.
Human plight can be quite disturbing, if we do not ennoble it by hearing and accepting the promises given by God to the prophets, and by the Lord’s pledge to us, that if we honestly seek God, God will assist us through Jesus to reach eternal life with its everlasting peace and joy.
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