Use the Gift of Time well
We are starting another year of our lives
This is a good time to reflect on the meaning of the time given to us. On Earth, every person receives a strictly defined portion of time; Usually it is several decades. When we are born, we get on the train with a one-way ticket. It is impossible to get off and take another train against the tide of the past time. This can only be done in the imagination with the help of memory, but the time lived through will not come back to us; It is impossible to experience it again – in a different way. The past time lasts and will return to us, but only in eternity, in God. Today, on the other hand, we have only the unknown future, and the present moment or present moments, one after the other.
The irreversible passage of time makes us think about the optimal use of the time we still have to live on this Earth... Like everything that is important, time is best seen through the eyes of God, through the eyes of Jesus. In the Gospels we find many teachings on the good use of life's time. In relation to the time given to us, Jesus recommends, among the others, an attitude of activity, service, vigil and prayer. Announcing his second coming to Earth, Jesus said: “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come. It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his work, and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch. Watch, therefore; you do not know when the lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’” (Mk 13:33-37).
Today, the attention of millions of people is directed (and intrusively) from morning to evening, primarily to various interesting areas of culture, to numerous life tasks, to countless products of technical civilization, as well as to their own benefits and use. Jesus – then and now – goes against the tide of all those forces that want to close man in himself and in temporality. Jesus tirelessly directs our eyes and hearts to eternity, to a Merciful Covenant with the Father, and to friendly relationships with our neighbors. Jesus does not neglect time. On the contrary, he knows its great importance and the decisive character of human choices, so he teaches us how to make good use of time in the perspective of eternal life in the Father's House.
Jesus' subtle advice
Here is one of Jesus' subtle (extra-biblical) teachings about time: "On earth you are rich men who do not know your riches: this time can buy you glory, love, increasing knowledge of God, merits, but you are wasting this time" (Gabrielle Bossis, He and I, vol. III no. 215). We often feel very poor. We accumulate various things, various knowledge and experiences for years – and nothing can remedy our poverty; and so we remain radically poor, because the abyss of the heart, created by God and for God, awaits God himself! The world says: time is money. It is hard to deny it, but neither money nor purchased things make a person rich in peace of heart, in a sense of meaning in life and in lasting joy. We truly become rich in basic personal goods when, in silence and recollection, we sharpen our attention to know the Glory of God and the Love of God. Will we, the radically poor (and at the same time royally poor), become rich in the next year of our lives? Will I "buy" more glory, love, knowledge of God, and also more merits that will pass with me to the other side?
In every area of life and culture, people gather knowledge, put it into textbooks and guides, and then pass it on. In the spiritual life – that is, in our concern for an intimate friendship with God and for kind relations with our neighbors – we should also reach for knowledge and good advice. Here is one such advice. Jesus advises (Gabrielle Bossis and us) how to make good use of time, associating fleeting moments with walking up and down stairs. "On every step of the stairs, tell Me that of all your life, now is the moment of your greatest faith, your greatest hope, your greatest love. It is necessary to grow from moment to moment and to tell Me about it" (Gabrielle Bossis, He and I, Vol. I, no. 659).
We walk up the stairs (even if there are only a few of them at home) quite often. Jesus advises us to want to use this simple act of walking up and down stairs to sustain and intensify the dialogue of love with God the Father. But. .. There are still paintings in churches and in our apartments. Someone painted them (or wrote them) so that they would be a window into God's world for those who looked at them. It depends on us, on our mindfulness, whether God will become more present and close to us through them. It is similar with so many other, even greater manifestations and signs of God's presence in our everyday life. Thanks to them, we can become more and more friends with God. Or on the contrary, they will be of little use if we do not want to notice them and read them properly. To a large extent, it depends on us whether we will find God more easily and more often during the next year of our lives; and whether we will experience His Love for us more consciously and strongly.
Listen to the Saints and ask them for intercession
In the spiritual diaries of saints and mystics we can find a lot of sophisticated advice that teaches us how to make every fleeting moment of the time given to us full of both our own spiritual activity and humble passivity, which opens us to the manifold action of God. Yes, in our relationship to God there is room for our activity and for our passivity. However, someone has to reassure us that both are right and necessary. If mathematics, physics, astronomy, philosophy and other sciences contain so much complex knowledge, can we, generally speaking, be satisfied with the ABC in the field of spiritual life?
Certainly, here we also need comprehensive and balanced knowledge, that is, the one that stimulates our activity and teaches us to ask God and expect everything from Him.
This is how simply and concretely Jesus speaks about it in “He and I” to Gabrielle: "One step more in love, one step more in hope and faith, you are not capable of this by yourself. Expect this from Me. Ask every day through its patron. (...) And since you are my child, I will listen to you. Children develop gradually and this is completely natural. Have patience for your weakness" (vol. II, no. 267). In these few sentences one can find a lot of world and peace, as well as encouragement to count on the intercessory prayer of the patrons of the day every day. And they, and holy images, and ... stairs are part of our everyday life. These and other "things" can strengthen our remembrance of God and perfect the art of living with the Remembrance of the Most Important.
It is worth praying about it
Finally, I would like to quote the words of Saint Faustina, which can be a good signpost for us for the coming days of the year 2025. They can also assure us that the Spirit of Jesus continues to speak to the Bride of the Church in our day too; and that we can draw from His teachings and Love with both hands, with handfuls:
“Welcome to you, New Year, in the course of which my perfection will be accomplished. Thank You in advance, O Lord, for everything Your goodness will send me. Thank You for the cup of suffering from which I shall daily drink. Do not diminish its bitterness, O Lord, but strengthen my lips that, while drinking of this bitterness, they may know how to smile for love of You, my Master.
I thank You for Your countless comforts and graces that flow down upon me each day like the morning dew, silently, imperceptibly, which no curious eye may notice, and which are known only to You and me, O Lord.
For all this, I thank You as of today because, at the moment when You hand me the cup, my heart may not be capable of giving thanks.
So today I submit myself completely and with loving consent to Your holy will, O Lord, and to Your most wise decrees, which are always full of clemency and mercy for me, though at times I can neither understand nor fathom them. O my Master, I surrender myself completely to You, who are the rudder of my soul; steer it Yourself according to Your divine wishes. I enclose myself in Your most compassionate Heart, which is a sea of unfathomable mercy” (Diary 1449-1450)
Happy New Year
fr. george
P.S. Gabrielle Bossis; 1874–1950) was a French Catholic Laywoman, nurse, playwright, actress and mystic, best known for her mystical work Lui et Moi, published in a very abridged English translation as He and I.