Fourth Sunday of Advent
Meditation: Jesus will return to the world on Judgement Day.
When you are inside of time, and–more deeply–when time is your master, it becomes increasingly more difficult to conceive a state of being that is timeless. Death takes us outside of time. Heaven is timeless. So too, will the world become timeless at the end of all things.
I like to think that I’ll see Lizzy before that day. I’d like to think that I don’t have to wait for the end of the end in order to see my daughter again. With every choice I make, I pray every day to become the kind of person that I need to be in order to warrant entering heaven where I envision Lizzy dancing in fields of flowers.
It’s hard to contemplate an apocalyptic vision, here enfolded as I am in my warm and comfortable bed, a nursing and sleeping Cecilia by my side. In many ways, I have already lived through my own personal end of the world in losing Lizzy, who was my whole world.
When I think about Jesus returning to the world in order to end it, the only thing I really feel is: the sooner the better. There is too much here that hurts. Too much of drudgery, of sin, of waste and filth and shame. If, at the end, Jesus comes to take me and Cecilia home to Lizzy, I can think of nothing better.
The problem is, of course, that Judgement Day, to the best of our knowledge and understanding, could be tomorrow and could be thousands of years from now.
What this really means is that all that there is–is now. There is no shortcut to heaven, no guarantee of sainthood, no quick and easy recipe to getting it all over and done with. Life has always been hard and it has been hard for almost everyone who has ever lived. The only thing that matters is what you are doing with the life that you have. What are you making with your time? Who are you spending it with? On? For?
I have had my answers since before I conceived Lizzy. My children. And so, when I think about Jesus coming again and the world dissolving in fire and water, I don’t fear and I don’t wait. What matters is that Cecilia needs me–now. What matters is the choices that I make in this moment, that shape the person I need to become in order to get to Lizzy. These are the only things that matter.
Time is keeping us all prisoners until we draw our last breaths. Here and now, we simply cannot conceive of a timeless world. But Christmas can help us with this. Because, that first Christmas, is the moment where God first chose to encounter time as a human person. Christ entered into time in order that we may one day enter the timeless. As with so many things, all we really need to consider is what the infant Jesus in the manger is teaching us about time and about presence.
For this night and in this moment, what that means is that Jesus entered into time in order to show us how much time really matters, how what we do matters, and how our bodies matter. If there is a better confirmation for a reason to keep living when all reason has been taken from you, I do not know of one. So, instead of singing Silent Night, tonight I will be silent, and meditate upon what that silence is trying to tell me. And if, at the end of this prayer, I find myself in a place without time, then I think I will have my answer.