We can take time, waste time, call time, find time, lose time, and sometimes feel like time is on our side. In reality, time is on no one’s side. And as scientific efforts in the field of quantum physics continue to advance, it is argued that the determination of time is a purely human invention.
The Church has done its part to help us get a handle on time. Pope Gregory the Great helped organize our observations of the heavenly bodies with the same calendar we use today, providing us with chronological parameters for our finite human bodies as they travel through what appears to us as time, until we reach the point where we stop traveling altogether and time no longer matters.
As an example of having too much time, I read an article about time in Scientific American. I had to read the article three times before I was somewhat confused by all the theories surrounding the concept of time.
According to the article, many smart people have tried to decipher the concept of the sequence of events, with varying degrees of success — and with varying degrees of success in communicating their findings to untrained and narrow-minded minds like mine.
As I read through this article five or six times – I’m not being precise because I lost track of time – a quote from the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty gave me a revelation.
He argued that time itself does not really flow and that its apparent flow is a product of our “secretly placing in the river a witness of its course.”
This revelation came just in time after I had learned everything about the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. As with so many things related to our faith, the more science discovers, the stronger the foundations of our faith become. And like faith, science evolves over time, leading to a deeper understanding of truth.
The Eucharistic Congress is over. Those who gathered in Indianapolis last month have returned to the four corners of the country and are going about their daily lives. But I am sure that the vast majority of them will continue to go to Mass – and in doing so, they will manipulate time in ways that no science fiction writer could have ever imagined.
Scientific investigations into the nature of time dovetail seamlessly with the Church’s teachings on the Eucharist. Just as our minds should be amazed by the concept of time or timelessness, so too should our souls be moved by Christ’s ultimate gift to his followers. The Eucharist was first introduced to us at the Last Supper and has permeated our concept of time ever since. It exists in all its glory whether among 60,000 people gathered in a sports stadium or when two or more people are gathered in the humblest chapel in the world.
Every Mass is a re-presentation of Christ crucified, risen and present. We do not remember anything from the past, we do not look into the future. Since God is not bound by time, neither is the Mass, in whatever form.
At every Mass, those present are taken to Golgotha, where the only Passion takes place. The liturgical rubrics transport us to that moment, and we join the angels and the few disciples who were there at the foot of the cross.
How can that be? I don’t know. I don’t know how the sun can never run out of hydrogen, even though it has been burning hundreds of millions of tons of it every minute for billions of years.
That sounds impossible, but it’s true. I know that the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. That also sounds impossible. I’m sure many people thought that way in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. But Jesus was persistent and his word is good enough for me.
Many of our culture’s growing non-believers advocate the call to “follow the science.” I agree. But I would caution those who utter that phrase as an “answer” to the immaterial to be careful what they wish for. For the further we follow the sometimes convoluted path of science, the more the “supernatural” takes center stage.
And as the Eucharistic Revival has shown this year and will show again next year, when a The nationwide Eucharistic procession ends its journey here in Los Angeles, God’s redemption is timeless, and so is the Eucharist and the souls who are drawn to it.
