Last Advent, I pointed out that God uses time to sanctify us. Our approaching 75th Jubilee for the dedication of our parish church is a good example of this. Of course this season of Lent reminds us each day that now is the time for repentance. Here is a further reflection on the role of time in our conversion story.
For most of humankind’s history, the world clock of the sun, the moon, and the stars regulated our lives. The natural world gave us biological timekeepers that measured the cycles of birth, growth, decay, and death. Yet, for the last three hundred years, the clock has been the pace setter for the advance of civilization. Improvements in time keeping have not merely accompanied almost every great discovery in science, they have made them possible. Dava Sobel’s remarkable little book, Longitude, launched a veritable publishing revolution. She detailed the struggles of John Harrison as he spent a lifetime designing and building a clock that would keep accurate time at sea. East-west position on the globe can only be determined by finding the position of the sun or a star at a particular time of day or night. Harrison, and later on his son, eventually made a compact clock that made accurate navigation possible.
The world became smaller in the 1800s when the steamship, the rail system, and the telegraph united far-flung nations into a network of travel and communication. This was possible only because the various ports and stations connected by these emerging technologies had synchronized clocks. During that century, the nations of the world came together and gave us the current world time zones.
The 20th Century, the century of the atom, began with a few small papers published by an unremarkable patent clerk in Switzerland. His job? Ensuring that every invention submitted to the patent office passed technological muster. The number one category of inventions submitted for his inspection? Timepieces, watches, and technologies that would enable clocks in widely separated cities to beat together. In 1905 Einstein quietly published a few papers that changed our understanding of time, energy, movement and matter because he lived in a world where the mathematics of timekeeping clanged loudly for a coherent theory.
Now, well over a 100 years later, the clock seems to rule our life. While it is largely the clock and schedule of our workplace which determines how we spend our days, there are myriad other ticking machines telling us what to do and when to do it. Think of how often your evening is planned by the television’s program schedule; how your activities are dictated by a sporting event and its ruling clock; how your meals are planned around the time it takes for a pizza delivery and the ding of a microwave; and how a conversation with a friend is measured by “peak hours” and the steady drain of a cell phone battery.
With such a tyranny of the clock, how can we manage to begin anything different this Lent, a time paradoxically named after spring growth, but ending with the death of Christ? It can’t be just squeezing in a new spiritual activity in the vanishingly small free time we have. Somehow we must embrace a singular method of measuring our time that masters chronos, measured time, and kairos, a God-encountering time that lends authenticity to the moment.
During Lent, the Catholic community gives itself over first of all to a liturgical season. This isn’t an event, circumstance, or point in time accomplished by an individual. Lent is a long rhythm of readings, prayers, exercises and meditations meant to change who we are as a people of God. If the goal of Lent is to prepare for the celebration of resurrection, then these six weeks must be a preparation to die with Christ. The Sunday and weekday celebrations of the Eucharist call us to greater prayer, self-emptying, and charity. Stations of the Cross, scripture meditation, and almsgiving are all excellent ways to enter into the spirit of Lent. While the clock may detach us from the natural world, Lent brings us back to the cycle of death and rebirth that Spring proclaims each year.
But I believe that there are a few things that hinder Lent’s transformative power. First of all, time is no longer a flowing river. The clock works by separating the passage of time into discrete intervals; thus, the length of our days are divided up into disconnected events that may or may not have anything to do with each other. What is sacred is sacred, what is secular is secular, what is work is only work, and what is play is all play. If the spiritual nature of Lent demands that all our moments be given over to becoming more Christ-like, how are we then to let these various activities flow into one another, re-integrating our person into the image and likeness of God? I knew our culture was no longer Christian the first time my nieces had basketball practice on Christmas day and a soccer game on Holy Saturday. Our work and recreation schedules are so regimented that the civil holidays barely leave time left in the calendar for a meaningful celebration of the birth of Christ or His resurrection.
It seems to me that the clock gives us a false notion of community. While it may make us walk lockstep into the future, it does not truly bind us together into an authentic relationship. Take, for example, how we wake up in the morning. Before the age of personal timepieces, the communal bell or clock tower harmonized a whole community’s activity. Now mother’s gentle voice waking a child up singing “Are You Sleeping” is replaced by a child’s personal phone alarm so that they can wake up by themselves. Personal timekeeping devices foster a remarkable degree of independence, but they camouflage the utter dependency we have on the moment by moment grace our Creator gives us. Ask yourself this question: Do your clock and schedule make you available for others or do they protect you from hearing the call of anyone in need? What made the Good Samaritan an example for us to follow was that he left aside his scheduled journey and took care of an injured human being. Jesus chose his words wisely when he used professional people as characters in the parable: He answered a lawyer’s question, and it was a priest and a public official who passed the wounded man by!
What then must we do? The Lord makes it quite clear in the Gospel of Matthew, read at Mass on Ash Wednesday: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. If the clock isolates and divides us from God and one another, then these practices will mend us. Prayer is simply this—spending time in conversation with God. How many conversations have you had with a best friend that lasted through the night? Did you notice the passage of time? True relationships do not meter out time spent together, but we know we can’t always talk with a friend every day. Why not make a date with God to pray? Isn’t that how we make time for our friends? If you aren’t praying regularly, start with once or twice a week. That’s how great friendships begin.
Fasting: this is the self-sacrificial element of Lent. We model ourselves on Christ who went into the desert to test his dependency upon the Father. We too should not be surprised when we try to give things up and encounter temptation. That’s the little voice of fear inside us saying the comfort will never return. This Lent, why don’t we give the gift of time to ourselves and to others? Are there periods in our day that are spent in rather useless or self-serving activity? Does our control of the clock mask a deep hunger for authenticity and meaning? Self-denial becomes holy only when it fosters a greater dependence on God and frees us for others.
The works of charity which we want to accomplish in Lent are perhaps the easiest way to give our time over to God. Yet many of us consider that most of the time we spend is time spent doing for others! It seems that at the end of the day, we have nothing left over for ourselves or for God. It is an emptying. How are we to be those givers-with-good-cheer that Christ encourages us to be? Once again, our perception of time has a great deal to do with the resentment that can build when we keep giving of ourselves. “I don’t have enough hours in the day!” “I’m just too busy to take care of everything!” “I’ll get to that in a minute!” How often do our complaints reveal that time has mastered us and not that we have mastered time?
Too often we see our responsibilities as our own and no one else’s. We give because we think that no one else is going to. Perhaps that is true in some cases, but Christian charity must always foster a sense of interdependence. It is not just me doing something, it is Christ working through us as a Church. This Lent, invite a companion to help you in your almsgiving. Split the bill and you will see the time you have available for others increase exponentially.
Finally, this Lent can be an opportunity to grow in your appreciation of the time God has given you on this earth. The sacred season must speak to you at a deep level, calling you to give your life over to time that transcends the here and now. The culmination of Lent is the celebration of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, an event once in time, but available for all times. Prepare for the liturgical time of the Triduum by reforming the time given to you each and every day.