Thoughts from the Second Floor Front XXIV Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 12, 2021
This week we will celebrate our Annual Forty Hours Devotions. This tradition was brought to Philadelphia by our fourth Bishop, St. John Neumann. In another era, the approach to be implemented Diocesan wide, was that each parish would be scheduled to celebrate Forty Hours. Then throughout the Archdiocese, the Most Blessed Sacrament would be exposed to enable the faithful to gather for prayer and adoration on a continual basis. These three days in our parish constitutes what clearly is Sacred Time what is often called Kairotic Time.
In the Greek that the evangelists used to write their gospel there are two words for Time. One is Chronos. This is ordinary time. Time on a clock. This is time that we spend in ordinary tasks in ordinary circumstances. The eight hours we owe to our employer constituting a fair amount of work for a fair compensation. This is the time students spend in a classroom. Although there may be some days when the student actually feels as if time has stopped as the prof drones on and on in a seemingly endless monotonic recitation of a lecture. Then there is Kairos.
Kairotic time is time that is pregnant with meaning; time charged with significance. This type of time is not reserved for religion. Kairotic time is the time when families wait the birth of a baby. The time one is sitting by the bed of a parent or friend in ill, in pain or even actively dying. It is the kind of time that people engage when waiting for a son or daughter return home from college for a holiday dinner. Why does time move so swiftly once the family has gathered for the meal or the baby is born? I often tell friends and family when we are on holiday: Hurry up! We’re on vacation!
I fervently hope that in the days of this Sacred Time in our parish you will find time to sit with the Lord. To be with Him in prayer, praise and worship. Make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Bring a book, bring your prayers, bring a rosary, bring your family. The invitation that comes to us today in Mark’s gospel plainly states both the challenge and invitation we are given by Jesus.
Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it. (Mk 18: 34-35)
Think about what it is we can deny ourselves on His behalf. Can you think about denying yourself an hour of free time in which you can pray? Pray for yourself, your family the sick, the suffering. Pray in gratitude and humility recognizing that all we have is a gift. How often have we begrudged those who ask for what we foolishly believe is our time? Do we awaken each day with a self-serving idea that the next twenty-four hours are ours to dispose with as we alone determine? We refer to “my time” as if it were my coat, my car, my lunch and my day. The day has been given to each of as a gift. In his work, De Doctrina Chrsitiana (On Christian Doctrine), St. Augustine asserts that “a possession [which] is not diminished by being shared with others, if it is possessed and not shared, is not yet possessed as it ought to be possessed. (Bk I c 1)
You may find that more than a wee bit confusing but think on this. Is your time any less yours when you share it with another? Jesus calls on us to deny ourselves and live for another. Occasionally people will say to me: Oh, you’re so busy I don’t want to bother you. I usually respond by saying that the only thing I have to offer is time, which I assert has been given to me as a gift. Recall Matthew 10:8b – Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.
Give Jesus some time this week in prayer. Faithfully, Msgr. Diamond