November is a natural point to think of endings. The Feast of Christ the king marked the end of the liturgical year and points us towards the end of time, the cold weather points to the winter months and the end of the secular calendar, and of course in November we remember the faithful departed, those who have already come to their own end. When pondering these endings, one thing becomes clear: The time that we do possess now is a gift. The Scriptures remind us of God’s intentions and desires behind giving us the time he gives us. 2 Peter 3:15, speaking to our present moment awaiting the Lord’s second coming, invites us to “consider the patience of our Lord as salvation.” Our lives are stories, thus every gift of time that the Lord gives us is an opportunity to turn again to our Lord in repentance and thus achieve a happy ending to our story, to make our stories one that ends with union with Christ. Our Lord can inaugurate the end of time at any moment, but generously gives us a new opportunity to accept salvation with every moment and to help others in doing so. While we ought to be grateful for the time we have generously received, death also reminds us that time is not guaranteed.

We also stand at the precipice of new things, namely the start of the Advent season. The Lord is so generous, he never calls us to reflect on our ending without giving us new beginnings. Perhaps there is no better preparation for our end than to accept this present moment with gratitude and to make it a new beginning. As we ponder this reality of time and what we are to do with it, the liturgical year helps us to find our place. The Vatican document Sacrosanctum Concilium states:

Within the cycle of a year, moreover, she unfolds the whole mystery of Christ, from the incarnation and birth until the ascension, the day of Pentecost, and the expectation of blessed hope and of the coming of the Lord. Recalling thus the mysteries of redemption, the Church opens to the faithful the riches of her Lord's powers and merits, so that these are in some way made present for all time, and the faithful are enabled to lay hold upon them and become filled with saving grace. (SC 102).

I want to emphasize that last sentence- that these mysteries of redemption are in some way made present for all time. At first glance it may blend in with the seemingly banal “churchy” language, but this is a shocking statement. It’s shocking because it changes our very idea of what is happening in the liturgy. If you asked your average Catholic what is happening in the liturgy, especially in the Advent and Christmas seasons, they may respond that we are recalling the stories of our faith and perhaps even applying the stories to our lives- And they’d be right. But this is not nearly a sufficient answer. There is so much more happening- There is the action of God, who stands outside of time. Christ Himself actually opens up the event to us and invites us in. In the liturgy, it is not so much us who are remembering as it is God who is presenting the mysteries of His life to us. This radical claim is difficult to wrap our minds around, especially as there is no referent in our everyday lives to compare this reality to. The Catechism is helpful here as it gives succinct verbiage to this amazing phenomenon. CCC 1085 states:

His Paschal mystery is a real event that occurred in our history, but it is unique: all other historical events happen once, and then they pass away, swallowed up in the past. The Paschal mystery of Christ, by contrast, cannot remain only in the past, because by his death he destroyed death, and all that Christ is - all that he did and suffered for all men - participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all.

There you have it. In just two sentences, this earth shattering (or should I say time-shattering) mystery is expressed. This has immense implications. Mainly, this ought to change the way we view salvation history and our place in it. Many spiritual writers, reflecting on this phenomenon, conclude that we are not victims of time, being so unlucky as to have “missed” the events of Our Lord’s life having been born in the third millennium. No, in the liturgy we are invited in and experience these events perhaps more intimately than the eyewitnesses. This is because God, in his omnipotent love for us, makes these mysteries of our redemption present in the liturgy.

When learning things about the faith, one of my favorite things to do is to “get into God’s head space” and ask “Why?”. Why does God make the past mysteries of his life present? Or to think of it this way: What is missing from the Christmas story that God feels the need to re-present it again and again? You. God is not satisfied with a Christmas without you- hence the invitation of Advent. God is willing and able to transcend time to bring you face to face with Him in the Christmas story. That’s what He’s “bringing to the table”. That’s what he’s willing to do for you this Christmas. The question for us then becomes how ready are we to receive and truly enter into this profound gift? It is in honestly asking this question that the season of Advent begins to make sense. We are not ready. A gift like this, a personal invitation from Christ Himself to experience not a memory but the actual event of Christmas with all its graces- that takes some time and preparation to be able to receive.  

Though I’m trying my best, this reality is difficult to put into words. Here we’ve stumbled upon another classic spiritual principle, that this really is something that must be experienced from the inside rather than described from the outside. Here we might take a cue from St Augustine, who famously encourages us to believe so that we may understand. This is so foreign and almost repulsive to our modern rationalistic thinking, which dictates that must apply the full scrutiny of our understanding to something before we can even begin to give credence to it. Repulsive though it may be, we must abandon this mode of operating. We must accept this invitation to take down our limited understanding from its place of supreme authority and put a humble trusting openness to God’s revelation in its place. Only then will we be able to receive this awe-some mystery of his loving initiative. Only in trusting receptivity will this mysterious grace be able to penetrate us.  

Lastly, an image. We started this article by reflecting upon the stories of our lives. Rather than thinking of our lives as a timeline and Christ’s life as a different unrelated timeline, the reality of the liturgy creates a different dynamic of our and Christ’s story. They become intertwined. We no longer think of our life and Christ’s as distinct things, rather we now behold a DNA strand- our lifetime line truly intertwined with Christ’s, and we’ve made DNA- a new thing. With St Paul we can triumphantly say “It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives within me.” (Gal 2:20).

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