The Eternal Now

Dear Friend,

In an essay this month in Give us This Day, theologian Richard Gaillardetz writes that throughout November the scripture readings we hear proclaimed are intended to disrupt our ordinary sense of time. We’ll hear parables of interrupted vigils, people being startled from sleep, accounts being settled, the trumpet of God, and the sudden appearance of Wisdom. In all of this, writes Gaillardetz, time as a chronological progression is replaced by time suffused with the eternal now.

This eternal now is also a call to action. This time of year always brings to mind a cartoon that years ago lodged in my memory. The grim reaper, scythe in hand, stands across the desk from the little man seated in his quiet office. “I’m glad you’re here,” reads the caption, “I can’t get anything done without a deadline.” Like Jesus’s parables, dark humor deals with the dread that gets triggered in the face of time evaporating in real-life disasters and violence such as what’s erupted in the Holy Land. It can paralyze us.

Yet here’s the truth of our tradition that may be just as stunning: Every time we gather for Mass, we’re invited to enter this same eternal now and not with fear and dread, but with open and humble hearts. Listen to St. Paul cherishing the uneasy community of Thessalonians, who were apparently expecting “the coming of the Lord” in their own lifetimes. He shows them the word of God not coming at them like a grim reaper, but in them, growing slowly: think of a nursing mother caring for her children, he tells them. In their Eucharist and ours what we see as the end becomes the beginning. Paul echoes the psalm: I have stilled and quieted my soul like a weaned child. Let us pray…

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan ofm