The “call to holiness” is a call from God to make His Kingdom real in the here and now. If we listen closely to the Good News that Jesus taught – change your hearts and minds for the Kingdom of God is at hand – it is obvious that He was not suggest-ing that God’s Kingdom only exists in the hereafter. We are called, as was He, to make God’s Kingdom real RIGHT NOW right where we are at, RIGHT NOW.

Some may ask how this is possible. Each of us lives in a small portion of God’s creation. We are called to make every effort to transform that portion given to us by the way we live and interact with others. It really matters not if we accomplish the transformation of our portion of the Kingdom. It only matters that this is our intention. Further, we never know how we impact the lives of others. That we leave up to God. We are called only to make every attempt to be Christ, the anointed one, to the portion of our world. (An aside: truly we can only “change” ourselves). We are called to continue the work of Jesus Christ. This is what it means to be “church” – that is a group of followers of Jesus who have the intention to make God’s Kingdom real here and now – to be the force that attempts to make God’s love real. This does not mean, however, that we beat our brothers and sisters over the head with our message. It means that we model for others a way of living that is in the likeness of Jesus. It truly means accepting all others as they are and not having the attitude that we are right and they are wrong. It means being authentic in the way that we live.

If we listen to the Gospels, we find that Jesus tried to convince others not to be pharisaical or hypocritical in the way that they lived their faith. He embrace all, even those who were rejected by His society as less worthy. We need to think about this.