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Summer Time, Biblical Time, and Church Renovations, Oh My!

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8 July 2010 - 3:33pm — joyce

By Jeremy J. Priest

St. Augustine said that he knew what time was until someone asked him what it was. Though there’s so much more to biblical time, I thought it would be beautiful to contemplate an aspect of it.
 
Biblical time stands out from the way other cultures understood time. This is contrasted with the ancient pagan idea that the cosmos was eternal and time was something cyclical, without beginning or end, doomed to repeat without end. It sounds strange and simplistic to say, but biblical time has a beginning and an end to it. Yet, it’s not so dull as all that. 
 
There and Back Again – an Architectural / Liturgical Journey
When the Israelites celebrated the Feast of Passover, as they recalled God’s mighty works (anamnesis), they were brought into contact with the events themselves. So, it was not simply to those who walked out of Egypt that God saved. Those celebrating the feast thousands of years later can say, “‘By strength of hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of bondage’” (Ex. 13:14). By doing the events again, they are remembered (anamnesis) and thus made present: “every time Passover is celebrated, the Exodus events are made present to the memory of believers so that they may conform their lives to them” (CCC 1363). 
 
So it is when we celebrate the sacraments. St. Paul speaks of this mystery of biblical time with regards to baptism: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death” (Rom. 6:3-4). How can we be baptized into Jesus’ death when it was so long ago? In the sacraments, Jesus brings us into contact with the mysteries of His saving work for us: we are drawn into His Life. 
 
Eucharistic Reverse and Fast Forward
This Old Testament idea of remembering (anamnesis) is renewed in the New Testament in Jesus’ central action, His Last Supper and Crucifixion. “When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ's Passover, and it is made present: the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present” (CCC 1364). 
 
It is in some sense a rewinding of history: “In the Eucharist the Church is as it were at the foot of the cross with Mary, united with the offering and intercession of Christ” (CCC 1370). But it’s the amazing wonder of that reality isn’t all that’s happening: it’s not merely some mystical rewinding of something we’ve TiVo’d. We actually touch the Mysteries and are touched by Him! 
 
It also fast forwards us to the eternal glory of the new creation that Jesus came to inaugurate. Indeed, it puts us in contact with those already enjoying the heavenly glory: “To the offering of Christ are united not only the members still here on earth, but also those already in the glory of heaven” (CCC 1370).
 
Church Building as Vision of Past and Future Glory
It is to this reality of the Sacraments that the church building bears witness: it is the past triumph catching up with us and the future glory coming to meet us ahead of time. Indeed “This earthly church made of stones and steel, then, makes visible the dwelling of God reconciled with men, the glorious city where the decay and death resulting from the Fall are fully transfigured into the radiance of God’s divine life. [The church] becomes an image of the heavenly realities and therefore ‘is’ heaven itself in sacramental terms” (McNamara, Catholic, 40).