THE MYSTERY OF THE TIMES

Michael McDermott

A Jubilee certainly has a lot to do with numbers and time, and in a special way the Grand Jubilee which coincides with the birth of our Lord does even more. Justly, the Tertio Millenni Adveniente dedicates its second chapter to the meditation of our time. Since time is already a mystery. In a certain sense, this represents the most obvious and superficial reality. Everyone measures it with every type of clock and program their encounters in its function. And yet, what would happen if all the clocks stopped working? Would time stop? Obviously, clocks do not give us the time, the limit themselves to measuring that which it is. Aristotle defines time as «the number of movement according to the now and the then».

But our post-Einstein era learned about the relativity of time. Motion can be calculated in different measures from the different perspectives in a universe in movement. There does not exist a fixed point outside of the universe from which time can be measured universally, nor can it an objective standard be furnished. This, therefore, is time. In his famous meditation in Confessions, Augustine decides that time «is an extension of the soul» in succession to psychic states through memory and anticipation. But this answer is only a partial one in that the soul stretched to measure, is itself wrapped in time.

Measuring it implicates a beginning and an end. If time goes beyond man, how can it be measured? It seems more likely that time measures man. So what then is time? As Augustine observed, the past no longer exits and the future still does not exist. The present is fleeing and has the same standard of a point of escape of a paradoxical Zenonian can be divided to infinity. From the moment in which we measure it has already passed. The Latin expression Tempus fugit, grasps this paradox well, since the verb reflects the present and passed: at the same time: «time flies» and «time has flown».

Where does time come from and go? Since man does not control neither his beginning nor his end, he cannot answer this question. In a more philosophical language time is rooted in the power of the subject and the subject is unintelligible to man. That is the reason why the question of time reflects the question on the human existence. Why does the scene of this world pass (1 Corinthians 7, 31). How can man manage time, a time that offers the «substance» of one's own terrestrial existence and yet threatens his existence? Natural religions attempted to read time by the cycles of the seasons, imagining these events as reflections on the celestial events. But the eternal return debilitates man's action and empties time of its significance. The higher and more speculative religions acknowledge that salvation can consist only in the escape from the cycle of reincarnation, from time and from every limitation towards the beatitude of an unlimited conscience or towards its equivalent, the lack of conscience. But such a vision definitively destroys the meaning of this world and all that happens in it.

Man is stuck in a trap: he must live well in the world without attributing to it any meaning. The Judeo-Christian revelation contradicts every wisdom which is simply human proclaiming that time has a beginning and an end and that which happens in time has an eternal significance. God gives time a beginning and an end and because God is love there can be no final opposition between Infinite and finite, eternity and time, God and man. God created time so that the free creation could return to Him. Creation did not happen because a loving God put it into being, and yet that does not implicate a lessening or limitation of God since he comes from nothing (ex nihilo). Creation exists in itself though it entirely leads to God. Time then, becomes the place of encounter between God and man, the place of liberty when love responds to love. The true structure of liberty implicates the marriage between Infinite and finite, Absolute and relative. If man was incapable of encountering the Absolute, he would not have an ultimate reason for any choice. Whatever reason adopted, could be relativized and the choice would then become arbitrary. Likewise, not even an immediate encounter with the Absolute would deprive man from his freedom of choice. Since there would be no distance, human freedom of choice would be overcome, as in the beatific vision of the necessity of choosing the Supreme Good. Only in the marriage between Absolute and finite, is the human freedom made possible. The finite supplies the distance which guaranties that the choice is not obligatory, while the Absolute motivates even the choice.

In all this, the Sacramental structure of Catholicism is reflected, so that the infinite God is rendered present in a finite form which requires an answer of total live and from man's answer, depends his eternal salvation or his damnation. This Sacramental structure was present in the creation of Adam and Eve, who were created in the image of God and that of Love. In their matrimonial love, a Sacrament of creation, God was present as its foundation, strong and objective. Their love manifested and reflected the love which is God. Unfortunately, sin entered the world. When Adam proclaimed Eve body of my body, bone of my bones after the sin, they did not want to take responsibility of their acts, but they attributed it to others; and thus their unity was destroyed (Genesis 2, 23; 3, 11-13). Having destroyed the divine image of love, men would no longer have been able to find God in a world of sin. There would not have been any reason to love, nor to find the Absolute. The world would have been without meaning and man would have been able to carry to extremes the finite or disperse in every sense.

Though man turned love away, Love did not turn man away. In throwing man out of Paradise, Saint Ireneo noted, that God showed his mercy, substituting the pungent fig leaves that covered Adam and Eve's nudity with pieces of leather. With Abraham, the several divine interventions became public history since He formed a particular pole His own in light of the Incarnation of his own Son. Since Jesus is the Incarnation of Love, men had to possess some kind of understanding of this which was offered to them as the greatest of mysteries. The Old Testament prepared the New, teaching men of the faithful love of God and to human sin, of the necessity of a Savour to win the hardest hearts. Time, then is seen as a preparation of Christ. As the Pope wrote, Time, in effect, is represented by the authentic act that God, in the Incarnation, came down to the human history (Tertio Millennio Adveniente). God offers Himself to man, renewing the image of God and making it fully and Sacramentaly reflect the love of God. The mystery of love is more fully manifested and the Incarnation of Love allows man to encounter God in the most clear and possible way in a world of sin. Particularly because the humanity of Jesus is fully human, being tied to the divine person, Time remains finite. It is not taken to the extremes, rather it is saved. It has become in fullness the place of encounter of human and divine freedom. Since the Absolute penetrates in time, Eschaton has arrived The Time is ready and the Kingdom of God is at hand; convert and believe the Gospel (Mark 1, 15).

As a divine revelation, Jesus cannot be surpassed. Since there is no one higher than God. He calls men to an absolute adhesion, to follow him until death. The freedom of men must be realised by personally being married to Jesus in freedom and in this way forming His Body, the Church. The objective has been reached, the place of promise and of love realised. As well, it is the place of the growth of fullness, towards a greater fullness. The «now» of the presence of God does not destroy, but adds potential to the «not yet» of the response of human liberty. In Jesus' call to the apostolate, which requires a sacrifice and the relativization of the entire world (Mark 8, 31-38) the omnipotence of God manifested itself not to destroy the liberty of man but to realise it.

The «indication» of the love of God, historically realised in Jesus' cross and in the Resurrection is the foundation of the «imperative» of the apostolate. The love of God did everything it could to free us from egoism but our answer depends also on us. In this way Time preserves its meaning for the Christian. It is no longer a preparation for Christ, but a life rich with fullness. It is the overabundance of Incarnate Love, good measure, pressed down and shaken together, running over will be put into your lap (Luke 6, 38). From this overabundance, the Christian mission explodes, evangelization. Christian love is naturally expansive and God calls all men to him. Sometimes, the non-believers are called to become Christians and the Christians are challenged to become even more themselves, and to further intensify themselves in Christ, fullness of Love, fullness of Time, the Alpha and the Omega(Apostles 1, 8; 21, 6), uniting themselves with the Church, his Body, the fullness of him who is realised inside in all things to realise the design of delivering in Christ all the things, those of the heavens as well as those of the earth (Ef 1, 1-23). Christ is the ultimate measure who contains all the time and brings it back to God.