CATHOLIC PICTORIAL   FOOD FOR THOUGHT
TIME LORD
	Fr Francis Marsden
	for 29.12.91

“When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.” (Albert Einstein)

Our perception of time varies. Modern physics reveals to us that time is not the absolute dimension we imagined. Send one of twin brothers to a distant star and back at half the speed of light, and he will return many years younger than his twin who has stayed on earth. Time flows more slowly at high velocity, a theory proved by sending very accurate clocks up in spacecraft to circle the earth. The speed of light is the unchangeable quantity, whereas space-time is distorted by intense gravitational fields. Light rays are bent near black holes, or even slightly by our sun.

Enough of physics: let’s look at a theology of time, ~s the Earth rolls onwards into 1992, and we prisoners in space—time have no choice but to follow. God is giving us another year, or part of one, in which to work out our salvation, before He lifts us — or we plunge — into eternity.

God creates space—time. “What existed before God?” people sometimes ask. There never was a time when God was not. There was no “before God”. God creates time. He holds all time in the palm of His hand. Everything is simultaneous to Him: omnium tota simul possessio, total possession of all things at the same time.

It is we who are subject to time, confined in time. God is free, outside of time, eternal. It is His nature to be total and perfect Existence. This quality we call aseitas. Of his own nature, from Himself (a se) He must exist. He is Necessary Being, we are contingent upon Him. If this all gives you brain-ache, if you can’t take it in, don’t worry. Our finite minds can’t take God in very well.

Perhaps a diagram would help. In Fig. 1 the semicircle running from the Creation of the universe to the Second Coming of Christ at the end of the world is the time—line, the time axis. At the centre of human history stands the Redemption on Calvary: God made Man saving the world. Time and history move towards their completion in return in glory and the Last Judgement, when the Kingdom of the Messiah will be established in all its glory.

How close is 1992 to the end of history? Not even the angels in heaven know, only the Father knows the appointed time. But He also knows the time appointed for each of us individually to “shuffle off this mortal coil”, the time of our death and destiny. But that destiny in eternity is not determined by Him, although He knows it. It is the consequence of our own decisions. Future, past and now, all are present to Him.

We take the idea of history and progress for granted because we have grown up in a Christian or post—Christian culture. In contrast, the Eastern religions do not see time as a line, but as a wheel, and endless, repetitive cycle from which there is no escape — life, death, re-incarnation, life, death, re-incarnation . . . going nowhere. Suffering follows suffering. Fatalism takes over from hope. The chance of oblivion is the only way out.

However even within Christianity we can fall into what I will call the ‘time—heresies’ of extreme traditionalism and modernism. The former is typified by the person who “craves the past, resents the present and fears the future” • As Catholics we share a Faith rooted in history and handed down (traditum in Latin). It is a Tradition, meaning something handed on from one generation of Apostles and Saints to another. In that sense we have to be traditional, obeying the Scriptures and treasuring the Faith of our Fathers. Sitting on the shoulders of the great Saints and scholars of the past, we can see further and more clearly in our own day.

Modernism is perhaps more prevalent: “Every day in every way things are getting better and better.” This attitude even unconsciously believes that what is said or done or thought in 1992 is automatically better than what was said or done or thought in 1991, or 1591, or 591. The latest gossip in the Press is granted more attention than St Paul, St Augustine or St Thomas Aquinas. Novelty is prized, Tradition despised. Whereas most human societies have valued the wisdom of the ages which has stood the test of time, modernism regards that as old-fashioned, outdated. Contemporary currents of thought are all-important, the fashion of the minute.
The degree to which we leap onto every passing bandwagon of trend or fashion is a measure of our own spiritual bankruptcy.

MAKING TIME HOLY – HALLOWING THE TIME

The ancient Romans and Saxons named the days of the week and the months after their gods. The Jews kept every seventh year as a year of rest for the land (Lev. 25), and a Year of Jubilee every fiftieth year. The French Revolutionaries divided the year into ten months and abolished A.D. in favour of a new numbering of the years. Mussolini tried the same, but his E.F. (Fascist Era) didn’t get beyond 13 or 14.

The way in which a society counts or divides time reveals a lot about its fundamental values. God’s society, the Church, divides time by its feastdays and liturgical Seasons. The regular cycle of feasts, Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and Ordinary Time finishing with Christ the king, runs like a spiral moving slowly forward through the calendar repeated year by year (Fig. 2). The Old Calendar also had Ember Days of fasting every quarter, and Rogation Days: for blessing the fields and crops.

In this way the whole year, time itself, is structured into the life, death and resurrection of Christ, Lord of Time. Saints’ days, feastdays, people's own wedding anniversaries and funeral anniversaries are fitted into this spiral calendar.

The Mass itself is like the axis of the system, the centre of celebrations on all the Feastdays. Like a time tunnel, the Mass makes it possible for us to be present at death and resurrection, under the mystical signs on the altar. The Mass is the one unique sacrifice of Christ, redeeming the world on Calvary, made present to us. It breaks down the barriers of space—time which limit us, but cannot limit the Risen Christ.

At the Last Supper when Jesus said “Do this in memory of Me”, we can translate that as “Do this to bring me into your present.” In other words, “When you re—enact this Eucharist, I will be present afresh to you, and you to me, sharing in my sufferings and resurrection. My saving power will be transmitted to you.” Or, in the Gospel text, “Whoever eats me will draw life from me.”

The centuries too are structured, Rome keeps every 25th year as a Holy Year, 1975 being the most recent. Additional events like the Marian Year of 1987 add impetus. Perhaps the major way in which Our Lady answered the prayers of the Church in that year has a connection with New Year’s Day 1992: in April - August of that Marian Year she appeared to Hrushiw in Ukraine to nigh on 500,000 Ukrainians. Consoled and encouraged, they demanded their freedom, both religious and national.

Mary’s feast of the Immaculate Conception 1989 saw the signing of the S.A.L.T. nuclear arms limitation treaty by the USA and USSR. The same feast this year was the occasion for Russia, Ukraine and Bielorussia signing the sodruzhestvo, their friendship alliance or ‘commonwealth’. If the news is correct, on the feastday of Mary, Mother of God, January 1st 1992, the USSR passes into history and the sodruzhestvo succeeds it.

	“Time like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away .
	O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,
	Be thou our guard while troubles last, and our eternal home.”