Time – and time again

This will not be an original reflection. Greater minds than mine have pondered the mystery of time, and whatever conclusions they came to, I doubt if I would even understand them, much less be able to develop them to the enrichment of my readers. I am no philosopher or physicist elucidating the mysteries of our world. I am just an ordinary human being trying to get through the day!

The reason I am writing this now and not at some other time (there we are already! There is “time” and there are “some other times”! I am already out of my depths! Or is that mixing my metaphors?) Anyway, the reason I am writing this now is because time in Lent always seems to move at a different pace from the rest of the year. I would hazard a guess that other Catholics who take Lent seriously have made the same discovery. Lent is six and a half weeks long, and it dra-a-a-gs out interminably!

I noticed this when I was growing up, of course, but I noticed it much more acutely when I entered religious life. Lent in a monastery is serious business! There are quite a lot of practices that mark it off from the rest of the year and that keep reminding you that you are in the desert with Jesus! Maybe some other year I can discuss some of them. But I don’t want to get off my subject, which is time.

Time, during Lent, moves slowly. It seems like Easter will never come! Then, finally, you reach Easter, you celebrate the Resurrection, and you move into Paschaltide, the liturgical time after Lent. Lent lasts six and a half weeks, and Paschaltide lasts seven weeks. Lent drags on, while Paschaltide zips by and before we realize it, we’ve celebrated Pentecost, and we are back in Ordinary Time.

So, time moves differently in Lent and in Eastertide. How does that happen? I think that the explanation is quite simple: time moves swiftly when you are enjoying yourself! Time drags when you are not, and the more you are uncomfortable, the slower it moves. Think of a dentist’s chair: unless he puts you under completely, you are aware of every tick of every second and of every whirr of the drill! A day at the beach, on the other hand, can pass by in a flash.

For me, this helps me to understand the idea of eternity. One description of eternity is a tall mountain, a mile high and a mile long and broad, made of solid granite. Once every hundred years, a small bird comes and sharpens its beak on the mountain. When the bird has worn down the mountain to nothing, eternity will be ended.

I have heard that description, and it doesn’t impress me. Even worse, it doesn’t make me long for the eternity of heaven. It sounds too much like time in a dentist’s chair.

For me, when I think of eternity, I remember a day when I was nine or ten, and a friend and I spent the day at the fair. This was the Monterey County Fair, which apparently still goes on, and which had everything a county fair should have: rides, food, expositions, craft booths, farm contests, you name it! You could wander the whole day just looking at all that was going on!

And this is what my friend and I did. We wandered, and we watched, and we were there the whole day, and the time passed unnoticed because we were so absorbed in what we were doing. I only remember a couple of images of all that I saw because I was too immersed in what was going on. I was enjoying myself so totally that I wasn’t thinking about me.

And that, for me, is what eternity will be like in heaven. Jesus will say, “Enter, good and faithful servant into the joy of your master,” and we will enter into his joy and be engulfed in it.

Sister Gabriela of the Incarnation is a member of the Discalced Carmelites order in Flemington. Learn more at www.flemingtoncarmel.org.