TIME ACCORDING TO GOD

Editorial Staff

St. Anthony in the Sermones wrote: “Nothing is more precious than time and, unfortunately, nowadays nothing is less appreciated. The Lord granted you, man, time so that you could earn salvation and you appropriated the time you have been given and wasted it. But, believe me! The Lord will ask back what belongs to him and he will do justice”.

We waste time because we do not appreciate it and consider it only in a chronological sense, that is a series of unconnected events. And so we think we can manage time and keep our tasks under control. Instead we become slaves to our timetables. We subdivide our time into minutes, hours, days and weeks and we let ourselves be dominated by their strict deadlines.

But the Gospel tells us different things, of fullness of time (Mk 1, 15; Gal 4, 4; Ep 1, 10). What we are looking for is already here. The fullness of time is the right time for an event to take place, the right time to experience an emotion, it is the harvest time and that to give thanks for the harvest. History is not a series of events that interrupt what we “have” to do. It should be looked at in the light of faith in the God of history. The events that took place last year and this year are not a series of happy or sad facts: we should see in them the wise creative hands of God who wants to make us grow up and mature.

Then time should be turned from chronos, a mere chronological time, into kairòs, a Greek word that is recurrent in the New Testament and it implies also opportunity and maturity for the appointed aim. Time will not become something to “be killed” or “manipulated” or “managed” but God’s field of action, of his work on us and through us.

And so we will hold in due consideration anything that may happen, either positive or negative, pleasant or problematic and we will ask ourselves: “What must God have in mind about all this?” We will see the events of the day as continuous opportunities to convert our hearts. Time will refer to Another and it will start speaking to us of God.