Memorial of Saint Philip Neri, priest

Lectionary: 298

“Father, the hour has come. 
Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, 
just as you gave him authority over all people, so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him.

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary…” So begins one of the most important documents in human history. There are points in time of such moment they can be ignored only at one’s peril. As Ecclesiastes teaches us,

There is an appointed time for everything,

and a time for every affair under the heavens.

The Gospel of Saint John has signaled the coming of this hour several times. Twice, Jesus might have been arrested but his hour had not yet come. (John 7:20 & 8:30) As he reclined at table with his disciples during the Last Supper, “Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father.”

The Gospel of Saint John is heavy with a sense of this opportune time within the cosmic awareness of eternity. It begins with, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” The end of time appears also in that first verse of John 13: “He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.”

Sinful as we are, we sometimes wish there were no time. The fictional Stephen Daedalus, in James Joyce’s Ulysses, famously declares, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” When things are just right, we might wish time could stop right here, right now. “Don’t change anything!” we say to one another. We cannot escape time, neither its necessity nor its destruction. 

Human beings, unlike other animals, situate ourselves within time. We want to remember our personal experience. We research our family genealogies; study the history of tribes, races, and nations; and ponder geologic and astronomical history.

We also plan the future. We warn our children, “While you’re rapping and napping, someone else is mapping your future.” There are few anxieties worse than not knowing what will happen next. Some people commit suicide when their future seems to disappear.

Our faith proves its worth as we embrace the hard wood of time's passing. It assures us the future is bright; our destiny is bliss in God’s presence.

Jesus begins his prayer with an enormous awareness of This Moment: “Father, the hour has come.”

The Catholic Church annually celebrates That Hour with the Triduum, a four-day rite that begins on Holy Thursday and concludes on Easter Sunday. We begin with the Sign of the Cross on Thursday evening, and do not sign again until we receive the presider’s blessing at the end of Sunday Mass.

Finally, we must wonder, “What happens in that singular hour?” Our anticipation began with Jesus' words to his mother, "...my hour has not yet come." John 19:27 answers, “Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” In this long-awaited moment of our salvation, the Church is born. We live within that hour as we embrace our Mother Mary and one another in a community of prayer.