New Year—Musings on Time

While out of town on Dec. 31, I spent some time reflecting on the nature of New Year's and the passage of time. You must bear in mind that New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are two days of the year for which I have a deep dislike. Why? I once thought that it was because New Year's gets so little "hype" and there's no real build-up to it. I also thought at one time that my dislike came from the fact that Christmas is a major religious festival while New Year's, for most people, is not. Of course, there's also that ominous feeling that I—and others—get at the stroke of midnight that can only be described as apocalyptic!

Upon deeper reflection, however, I finally reached the conclusion that New Year's has so little pull for me because it is a major celebration of something rather humdrum—the passage of time. Christmas, for Christians, represents something far more significant—the beginning of time in the Reign of God! The Reign or, if you prefer, "kingdom," of God is something I have always understood to be here and now. With the birth of Christ, God among us, heaven, earth and time have become one eternity. 

Eternity being the only real time cannot be expressed adequately in human terms other than "here" and "now." We mark our days, hours, minutes, etc., through our clocks, watches and calendars, but time, as we commonly understand it, simply doesn't exist beyond the moment which is gone before we are aware of it. The counting and marking of time seems, to me at any rate, nothing more than our feeble attempts to control those moments.

This does not mean that our accomplishments are unimportant; neither does it mean that what we might do in the moments ahead of us is any less important. It simply means that we must have a sense of perspective. Each moment is a gift from God and, although we cannot hold onto each moment, we can live each with gratitude in the here and now. 

No one moment is any more sacred than any other. We are all in the Reign, or Kingdom of Heaven; how ethically we live each moment among our fellow human beings will determine our staying in that Reign. 

—Father Bill Burt