Homily

A few weeks ago I went to the Museum of Time in Waterford, Ireland. That interesting museum is all about how human beings see time and the instruments they have invented in order to measure time. It’s a fascinating collection. A few hundred years ago very few people had time pieces and if you asked them what time it was, they would often be guessing. Certainly they wouldn’t be telling you it’s 10:25. Their sense of time was fashioned more by sunrise and sunset, or by the church bells ringing than by anything else. But I do believe 200 years ago more people were concerned about eternity, the never-ending time, than people are today. And they could tell you something about that time.

We have tons of gadgets today that can tell us what time it is: clocks, watches, phones, computers, we can even check what time an atomic clock says it is, accurate to 1 part in 10 to the 14th power! And yet it seems that the one measurement of time most people have little time for is thinking about eternity, the forever and ever, por los siglos de los siglos, the на віки вічні. So many prayers and blessings end with that phrase, “forever and ever”, eternity, and yet it is often so difficult to think of eternity. We live in a world marked by time, and time always means change. Even as I am speaking to you, I am growing older, and I feel new wrinkles ready to appear on my face. So, we are constantly faced with using time and the changes that come with time, whether those changes are made by us, or whether they happen simply as a result of living in a temporal world. And since we live in a temporal world, what is happening now, what will happen later today and tomorrow is very important to us. Understandable.

We have so much more stuff and so many more possibilities to do so many different kinds of things than people did 200 years ago. In the early 1800s people could travel in covered wagons about 15-20 miles a day. We can get to Cottage Grove in 24 minutes, and not only that we can get lunch at McDonalds there in about 3 minutes time. The faster, quicker and easier life has become in so many ways is good from one way of looking at things, but at the same time it has its downside. We can now be so stuck in all the possibilities of today and tomorrow, that we don’t stop to think about eternity, the endless forever that will meet us at the end of our days, the end of our time on this earth. This is one reason why so many modern people don’t do funerals and shy away from thinking about death. They have no understanding of a day that will never end and so they are very anxious about the coming of their last day here, and so they try to put it out of their minds.

Not so for St. Paul! In today’s epistle he tells the Ephesian Christians that through their baptism they have been called to a special vocation that is not temporary.

But God, Who is rich in mercy, because of the great love He had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

We have been called to live, in the ages to come, in the endless time, to experience the immeasurable riches of God’s grace and kindness. That’s our vocation as Christians: to be united with the Lord forever and ever, in genuine love and happiness. It sounds unbelievable and indeed, only faith can lead us to see that this is true. But I think our problem is that while we often think of what we are going to do later today (and perhaps even during this Liturgy) and what we are going to do tomorrow, how often do we think about what we are going to do forever and ever? The plans I make for today and tomorrow may be good plans to do good things but all of that will come to be, or not come to be, and then those plans and the actions they required will move into the past, for better or worse. But the day when my life changes from now into forever is the day where time will never change.

Lots of people spend lots of time and energy and thought and even emotion in struggling to work out what they can do to avoid death as long as possible. Yet I wonder how many give a thought to eternal glory or eternal suffering, because one or the other will be our final situation when this life comes to an end.

Of course, there will be a judgment. Even those who may venture to think, at certain times, about eternal life, those people are usually pretty sure they are going to be ending up in glory. But I am not guaranteed a place with Christ in the heavens. I think Jesus makes this very clear in a number of places in the gospels (think about the separation of sheep and goats). Satan is a pretty smart guy, and yet he ended up in hell. How I use the time I have available to me now will be the basis on which I will be judged by the Just Judge. Having a healthy fear of hell can be a helpful thought. Yet, even more so, having a proper sense of what it means to live in the love of God forever and ever should be a powerful help to us as we strive to grow in holiness, in the time that we have left to us. And let us pray and help one another to grow into holiness, for this is the work of the Church and this is the calling of every Christian.

Unlike so many of the saints, I am often not happy that the tic toc of time means my life in this world is, sooner or later, coming to an end. So it’s a good thing to think about that in faith, and with hope and trust, so that I may keep striving to better live in Christ today in order that I may live in Christ forever, and that you may do the same. Time is not on my side, but God’s grace certainly is.

Let me close with another passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (chapter 1):