The ordinary times of our lives are not simply ordinary. The Christian tradition has always shown that every time is touched by Christ. As Christians, we offer our time back to Christ as spiritual worship.
The ordinariness of Ordinary Time is setting in—not just liturgically, but even culturally. The wreaths are gone, the crèches are put away, and the Christmas trees have been disposed of. As we return to the Ordinary Time of the liturgy, we return also to the ordinary time of our daily lives. The friends and relatives we hosted have returned to their own homes, school is beginning again, our household decorations are back to their ordinary arrangement. It’s all just back to normal again.
But the ordinary times of our lives are not simply ordinary. The Christian tradition has always shown that every time is touched by Christ. Take the Church’s great Christmas patrimony. As goes that ancient Christmas hymn, Christ “is Alpha and Omega, / he the source, the ending he, / of the things that are, that have been, / and that future years shall see / evermore and evermore” (Prudentius, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten”).
The Easter liturgy itself speaks in similar terms. On the great and holy night of the Lord’s Resurrection, the Christian is privileged to hear the Church’s great proclamation of “Christ yesterday and today, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega. All time belongs to him, and all the ages. To him be glory and power, through every age and for ever. Amen.”
All time belongs to Christ. Every moment of time has its be-all and end-all in Christ. Every second revolves around Christ. As Christians, we offer our time back to Christ as spiritual worship. We offer him our day at work and even our sleep at night. Throughout the day, we recall that this or that moment—whether pleasant or difficult—truly comes as a gift from Christ. We thank him for it and offer it back to him. Before going to bed, we ask Christ for sleep—for even sleep is his gift (Ps 172:2)—and we offer our time in sleep back to him. We ask that he restore our bodies and minds so that we can offer him another day.
All these offerings are themselves a great grace given to us by Christ. For in offering all our time back to Christ, we follow the Christic focus of time itself. Not only does time belong completely to him, but our time—our ordinary time—becomes completely his. Our every second revolves around Christ. And so we, creatures in time, likewise begin to revolve around him, and come to be more and more completely Christ’s. We too then find our own be-all and end-all in Christ.
Lord Jesus, all time belongs to you, the source and end of all that is, of all that has been, and of all that future years shall see. Take my time—my ordinary time—as an offering to you.
Republished with gracious permission from Dominicana (January 2023).
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With your kind permission biblical and mythical time is our only and true parable for heart beats that measure angelical time or twinkle of an eye since the hesitation of reason is one heart beat or approximately one second in mathematical time but before reliable calendar inaugurated only by Moses the great patriarchs lived in spirit and saw biblical time with their hearts that were still more or less in covenant with ancestors so it is possible that in the various genealogies in Genesis we must translate their heart time into our mathematical time and it is my modest proposal that the seven days of creation in chapter 1 are qualitative and that the genealogy of Adam in chapter five is semi-qualitative each biblical year in this genealogy is perhaps 1000 solar years and each of ten generations from Adam to Sem Kam and Japhet is one great human tribe in palaeolithicum that together span 1656 biblical years from creation to great flood or 1656000 solar years and the genealogy of Sem in chapter 11 is semi-quantitative each biblical year in it is perhaps 20 solar years since the great flood 11500 solar years ago and each of ten generations in it from great flood to Abraham’s covenant is one great modern human tribe in neolithicum that together span 362 biblical years or perhaps 7500 solar years of prehistory and only with Abraham reenters the personal God and the historical individual with subsequent genealogy of Abraham quantitative and each biblical year in it is one solar year and each generation in it is an historical individual and based on such assumptions here is biblical time tables translated into mathematical time
14500000000 solar years ago : philosophicum
First angelical day : creation of cosmos “aether”
4555000000 solar years ago : praecambrium I
Second angelical day : fire, gases, water, earth
3750000000 solar years ago : praecambrium II
Third angelical day : prokaryotes photosynthesis
2550000000 solar years ago : praecambrium III
Fourth angelical day : eukaryotes cyclical life
550000000 solar years ago : secondary
Fifth angelical day : vertebrates motional souls
66000000 solar years ago : tertiary
Sixth angelical day : mammals emotional souls
appr. 1700000 solar years ago : quarternary
Seventh angelical day : Adam and Heva reason
The Garden of Delights was imho Ngorongoro
Our first parents were human beings with 46 chromosomes which was evolutionary leap between great apes still with 48 chromosomes and they were Homo erectus who knew fire and who then soon colonized the entire world but it seems that socalled Homo habilis were not human beings but were only great apes who might well punish Cain for his murder on Abel
1668000 sya : Adam then Seth then Enosh then Cenan then Mahalalel then Jared then Enoch then Methusalem then Lamech then Noah who span nine climate cycles averaged 117000 years
612000 sya : Noah is archaic Homo sapiens who spans four climate cycles averaged 125000 years
112000 sya : Sem and Kam and Japhet are modern Homo sapiens who spans one climate cycle still in pleistocaenum or palaeolithicum
12000 sya : great flood and then neolithicum which is first holocaenum I from great flood then 8000 sya holocaenum II from tower of Bable with modern languages in great cities then 4000 sya holocaenum III from Abraham then 2000 sya Christendom from Jesus Christ
Barbara Poszewiecka recently dated human ancestral chromosome fusion 2p 2q –> 2 at appr 900000 years ago consistent with appr middle pleistocaeno when climate cycles appr period doubled from 45000 solar years to 90000 solar years and when archaic Homo sapiens began 800000 solar years ago and when use of fire also began so probably so called Homo habilis and so called Homo erectus were both still great apes and archaic Homo sapiens were our first parents and then Dr. Craig whose book is reviewed elsewhere on The Imaginative Conservative is correct when he says on biblical and anthropological grounds that Adam was Homo heidelbergensis so the ten great tribes from Adam to Noah span ten climate cycles in middle pleistocaeno and the tertiary-quaternian boundary is at 850000 solar years ago with Adam and Heva and then the world was already populated with socially advanced great apes so called Homo erectus who were not capable of reason with knowledge of God so the ten great tribes in the genealogy in Genesis chapter five lived almost in aeternity with handed down memories through several hundred thousands solar years from garden of delights which can well have been Ngorongoro so in my above chronology for 1700000 solar years ago please read 850000 solar years ago and consider what kind of almost aeternity they lived and wandered in the living Elohim and so and so many hundred thousand solar years were to their identity only ten generations and to us inside the other end of the Holy Bible it is perhaps similar as still many thousands of solar years pass on with all humankind joining the Church and with greater or lesser holiness until celestial trumpets sound with revelation of the anointed who once died but rose again.