In the Light of Eternity…

Time is a funny thing.

They say that the best hitters in professional baseball (GO CUBS!) can actually see the seams of the ball as it hurtles toward them at 80, 90, even 100 miles per hour. For the batter, time – in space – almost stands still. At that very same instant, however, what is happening in the stands, the parking lot, in the city, state, country, and world is often going by in a blur. Time moves at warp-speed for some while creeping for others. The paradox of time is that it is both shared universally yet is particular to individual lives and circumstance. While we are all experiencing a time of pandemic, we are not all experiencing it in the same way. Often, those who are hungry, homeless, lonely, and despairing – those on the very margins of society - find the concept of time almost meaningless because they do not have the luxury of hoping or dreaming or thinking of a space in time beyond the moment in which they find themselves often struggling for survival. 

One of my dear Dominican sisters is fond of saying, “In the light of eternity…” (as in, there is something far bigger at play here.) I love that because it puts just about everything in perspective without diminishing its importance or the suffering or joy felt as a result. This is all to say that however we experience and refer to time, whether it is to ‘these unusual and difficult times’, to time gone by, or to a time in the future, perhaps it would help to remind each other that wherever, whenever and whatever happens, everything happens in God’s time, which is all the time. This is where we are called to live, breathe and do God’s work, ministering to each other, especially to those most in need. And that God incarnate said to each of us, “I am with you always, even to the end of time.”

Kathy Flynn OP

Milwaukee, WI