Justice shall flower in his days,
and profound peace, till the moon be no more.
May he rule from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
R. Justice shall flourish in his time and fullness of peace for ever.
Because we think of time as linear -- past, present and future -- we have a hard time wrapping our minds around the scriptural understanding of time. It helps to remember the sense of time we might feel during the Mass, when we seem to enter through a “portal” into another dimension of time. Liturgy is, in a sense, timeless.
Around the altar we pray with the saints of all time and there is only one moment – this moment – which stands in the forever of now. The cross of Jesus Christ looms before us during the Mass even as he rises from the grave and ascends to heaven. He is born again on the altar and is also seated at the right hand of God. Attending the Mass attentively, we experience these incidents of now-ancient history as if they are right now. When the cantor asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” we answer, “Indeed I was.”
On this day each year we hear Saint Matthew’s proclamation: the Fullness of Time has come. He brings finality to the genealogy of Jesus with his numbers: three times fourteen generations, “the total number of generations.” His final statement and last word should be read with awe: “Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.’
This is the moment of all time. Again, this is hard to wrap one’s mind around. Linear time is always going somewhere but it’s not going anywhere in particular. It marches from past through the present to the future, from banality to banality; and no moment has any particular significance – unless you think of this moment and yourself as somehow outstanding and of great, singular importance. (Good luck to you if you do!)
This reading invites us to enter the eternal timelessness of Christmas, which came to Earth with the birth of Christ but lives in eternity. We are as ready as we’ll ever be, having confessed our sins, done our penance and opened our hearts.O come all ye faithful….
I am not very good with a sense of time, as my husband will attest. Maybe that is why I love attending daily Mass; I love the sense of timelessness. All that really means anything is God's love for us all.
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