Friday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time | Ephesians 4:1-6 | Luke 12:54-59

Paul is in prison when he writes this.

He does not mention it to invite sympathy. He mentions it because it matters for what comes next: "I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received." The call is the thing. The imprisonment is just where he is while he keeps saying it.

What he urges is not spectacular. Humility... Gentleness... Patience... Bearing with one another through love. Striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. These are not the heroics of the faith. They are the ordinary daily discipline of people who have been given something in common and have to keep choosing it.

And then he names the thing they have been given:

One Body. One Spirit. One hope. One Lord. One faith. One baptism. One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Seven unities. Paul is describing a reality. The Church is not a coalition of people who share values. It is a Body - one Body, animated by one Spirit, oriented by one hope, confessing one Lord through one faith, received through one baptism, held in existence by one God.

The unity is not something the Ephesians need to create. It is something they have been given and are urged to preserve.

In the Gospel, Jesus is exasperated. The crowd can read the sky. South wind: hot. West clouds: rain. They know how to interpret natural signs. But the sign standing right in front of them - the Kingdom arriving in the words and works and person of Jesus - they cannot see.

"You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky; why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"

The answer, I think, is in Paul's list. The unity of the Body - one Lord, one faith, one baptism - is itself the sign of the Kingdom's arrival. When people who would otherwise have nothing in common are bound together in one Body, bearing with one another, maintaining peace across every line that divides - that is the present time made visible. That is the Kingdom pressing into the world.

We do not always see it because we are inside it. The crowd missed the sign because the sign was a person who did not look like what they were expecting. We miss the sign because the sign is ordinary: one more Sunday, one more shared Creed, one more reconciliation with a brother or sister we would rather have written off.

Paul is in prison and writing letters about humility and patience because he knows what those things mean. They are not small virtues for small times. They are the practice of the unity that is itself the announcement that the Kingdom has come.

The one who can read the signs of the sky but cannot read the sign of the Church - of its impossible, unearned, maintained-at-cost unity - is missing the largest thing in front of them.

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Deacon Michael Halbrook writes daily reflections on the Mass readings and more at DeaconMichael.net. He is a permanent deacon of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.