WHAT TIME DO YOU HAVE?
Whenever
the Chicago Bulls team of the Michael Jordan era goes to court, Jordan
usually shouts, “What time is it?” The team shouts back, “Game time
hoops!” The response is supposed to psyche the team to a serious game of
basketball. One time, Jordan shouted, “What time is it?” Someone
quickly shouted back, “8:30!” Everybody laughed.
“8:30.” This is what philosophers call chronos time:
a linear, quantitative reckoning of the seconds, minutes and hours.
When the Bible speaks of time, it is usually in the sense of kairos time:
the qualitative indwelling of God, the in-breaking of God in history.
God’s entrance into human history has radically transformed our dry,
qualitatively deprived experience of chromos time and has aligned it to a participation or perfection in the
exciting, rich and fulfilling experience of kairos time: the domain of the Divine.
As admissions director of a seminary, I once interviewed 12 candidates.
They were high school seniors, hoping to begin seminary formation after
graduation. All of them asked the same question: “How long will it take
until I become a priest?” When I told them, “Ten years,” their jaws
fell. I smiled because that was also my own reaction when I applied in
the seminary. Why? Because I looked at time then only in terms of chronos.
The First Reading narrates the conversion of the King of Nineveh and
the whole city upon the preaching of Jonah. Conversion is God breaking
into your personal history, making it His story as well. A life lived in
friendship with God is an ever-present experience because finitude is
sprinkled with eternity. That’s why it feels like there’s no beginning,
no end.
Why did the king and the whole city convert to God upon Jonah’s bidding? When the God of kairos summons, everything else is second place. God’s call is not simply a call to do something. It is a call to be something — to be holy, to be friends with God. Belonging in the Kingdom is not a matter of doing. It is a matter of
being. Fr. Joel Jason
REFLECTION QUESTION: Are you living a life in friendship with God?
Father,
it is truly good news to be given the offer of kairos time — the time
of fulfillment. May that offer be mine — for all time. Amen.
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