Sanctifying the Times (Full Essay) by Theodore Madrid

     Night and day, winter and summer, planting and harvesting; Man’s first layer of the experience of time lies within these categories with their attendant demands pressing on him directly. These basic demands are made on him for his survival and he must ever plan to meet them. Each day the sun rises, illuminating a world warm and friendly at one time, cold and harsh at another. The natural world around man is a dynamic and variable cycle and if he is to thrive he must master the rhythm of this variability, locating himself within a comprehensible schema of time, a primitive calendar, which then allows him to orient and guide his own life. He will hunt when there is light, store up provisions during the times of plenty, establish shelter for the times of harsh cold, and celebrate in the days of peace. In Genesis it was promised that this would ever remain the case: “All the days of the earth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, night and day, shall not cease.” It remains so even today.

     Deeper in the experience of his being in time, man comes to understand his own life as a moment within the vast current of time which comes before and lasts long after him. The meaning of his brief years is enriched in connection with a greater story. Mythology, history, custom, and a way of life are received as introductions to the world around him and his place in it. Standing in this vast current of time, man develops an understanding of his relation to his ancestors, descendants, and that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before and shown something of the way to that “bright and morning star” by whose light we see light. In view of Christian revelation these natural elements of human experience take on an utterly new significance, as from shadows and reflections into the hidden reality to which they point. This transformation is perfected when it is expressed in the cultural life of a community. As Pope St. John Paul II affirmed, “a faith that does not become culture is a faith not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived”¹ The most profound truths of human life inspire man to communicate and understand them via a living culture. 

     As in all things in the Christian life, the pilgrim journey of the Church militant relies on that fellowship and community in the ark of the Church without which safe passage through this valley of tears is impossible. Just so, in the ordering of the Christian life in relation to time we are aided by a shared framework. 

     As Josef Peiper made clear, “Divine worship means the same thing where time is concerned, as the temple where space is concerned.” Where there is liturgy, the people gather in one place which becomes a site of the cult. Though not invariably fixed, such examples show that the heights of liturgical life are closely connected to place. Architecture, art, and ornamentation become means of ‘incarnation’ or concealment. Place is made sacred in the cultivation of the environment wherein the community gathers, like the Jewish temple which was in its adornments and symbolism a representation of the garden of Eden and picture of the cosmos in miniature.² Just as we gather in a place and enrich it with profound meaning in order to orient our community towards God in preparation for his coming, we must shape our time to draw out another aspect of this orientation. 

     In order to cultivate a fertile and profound way of life which can endure throughout the changing seasons and many circumstances of life, one which preserves the most essential things at the heart, we would do well to reflect on the role of the liturgical seasons in shaping our communal experience of time and brining about this more fruitful way of life. The liturgical season builds upon a deep human impulse, providing what that natural impulse seeks to establish and opening a supernatural avenue to participation in the things of God fitting to our nature. Just as a farmer diligently tends to his crops through the seasons, Christians are called to nurture their spiritual lives through the cycles of the liturgical calendar.

     One finds that in liturgy a new awareness arises of the connections between the physical and the spiritual. A time and place are set aside as sacred, to be a meeting point with light from on high that exceeds all knowing. Simple things are made into signs. Beautiful vestments are worn, candles cast their soft glow, the sweet smell of incense wafts through the air, music greats our ears, wine is poured, the bread is taken up, each small act transforming the familiar objects of material life into signs of a deeper spiritual reality. As the spiritual and material dimensions of man are more harmoniously woven together, man himself is integrated and becomes able to stand in the world as Adam once did, awed by the gift of creation and impelled to stewardship.

     Liturgy at its best honors this composite. It takes everything within man’s natural experience of the material world and weds it to his spiritual dimension thereby restoring to him something of his original integrity and openness to the manifestation of God in the created order. Because we come to see how the spiritual and material are thus interwoven, we are able to gain new insights and understanding of time and place. The spiritual dimension of man’s life brings these ideas to a new plane when sacred worship is involved. It also becomes evident that this transformation of time and place reaches its fullest and highest form in the context of a communal act. The communal sharing of life leads to culture, which signifies an overflowing of the highest things, of true worship, into the “city of man” and an thereby a reciprocal elevation of natural man into the city of God.

   The linguistic connection between the Latin root cultus and our English word “culture,” reminds us of the inseparable connection between that which a society reverences and the culture of that society. One element of the cultus which nourishes culture that merits close attention is the relation of liturgical calendar to the creation of culture, the unity of a community in its understanding and living of time. Particularly familiar to Christendom, liturgical calendars are nearly ubiquitous in all ceremonial and liturgical cults of worship, from tribal rituals to Roman festivals. Even the jubilant godlessness of the French Revolution could not extirpate the need for a liturgical calendar in its novel civic religion. As Joseph Ratzinger said, “there are in reality no societies altogether lacking in cult”³ and it seems that no society utterly lacks a calendar for that cult. Even today, elements of the consumer-oriented calendar of holidays shows some correspondence to this pattern.  

     The root of the need for this liturgical approach to time lies in part in the necessity for transcendent experience which is then regularized into religious traditions that are able to confer a greater sense of the meaning of the place of the community in time, space, and relation to the transcendent. Mere life, with no spiritual horizon, is a thing the human spirit cannot long endure and which cannot serve as the ground of an authentic communal life. Even the savage organizes life around the worship of some power. Only the nihilist and the hedonist see the world without horizons, meriting the pity of  those who have begun to gaze upwards. The human spirit needs to ascend from the cave, as it were, to true knowledge of the world, knowledge that is comprehensive and harmonious. 

     Ultimately, the light of faith takes this knowledge to heights unimagined by natural man, without ever leaving behind anything of the true, good, and beautiful. A spiritual horizon provides a comprehensive and harmonious integration of the transcendent with time and space, a unification of the elements of man’s dual nature. It is within this context that ordered, meaningful, and truly human life is most able to flourish. This need is inescapable and thus forms a perennially relevant object of consideration in social thought. 

     The answer that this unified communal relationship to time answers this fundamental necessity of the human spirit can be seen in several ways. A regular liturgical calendar is constitutive of a unified communal relationship to time and therein serves as a substantial and rich source of rootedness and unity of individuals in a collective identity. This element is particularly noteworthy in our own time, typified as it is by social atomization and a profound rootlessness experienced by so many. Where life is a continuous series of fleeting impressions, desires, and random motivations it lacks the coherence needed to ground the human spirit in a rich sense of meaning. There is nothing behind or above the present moment, only the individual facing chance as it unfolds in time. 

     Viewed from the egoistical perspective of the isolated individual, life promises little more than the cessation of private appetites. There is yet nothing higher into which he might be taken up, no participation in a good greater than the individual. The adventure of a life in this view likewise risks being reduced to a succession of stimulating – or worse, mundane – moments, each of which fade into the past as soon as they arise because they lack a connection to a meaning beyond the individual’s present experience. Hope for something awaited and joy in its attainment become at best shallow caricatures of the hope and joy of the one who is thereby transported beyond himself. Hope for the experience of a passing moment. The laborer sweating in the field fears hunger and yearns for the moment when he falls to sleep in the shade. That is, until he thinks of the joy of a bountiful harvest, of celebration of worship, and of that festivity which calls him to labor the more zealously and carefully prepare now for the joys to come. All the more so does the laborer in the kingdom of God bear joy in his heart hoping for the great feast that will know no end. 

     Feasting sets our eyes on those objects worthy of veneration and celebration, though we cannot feast perpetually. In this life, there are forces within and around us which deform and confuse the right order of things thereby demanding times of reform and correction. Just as tending to the vine requires pruning, in order to guide the growth of the fruit and compensate for those errors along the way which threaten to spoil the growth, fasting guides and corrects the soul and body to ensure that whatever would impede true fruitfulness is corrected. We have no wine without patient labor, no feasting without fasting.

     Not only does fasting set individuals aright in their pure devotion to God – the highest of its goals – it also creates in the character of a group people those virtues which are necessary to the common good. Virtue is certainly nothing less than integral to the flourishing of any society, especially a Republic such as ours. As we are reminded by John Adams “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”⁴ Thomas Aquinas asserts likewise that “the common good of a political community can be rightly disposed only if its citizens, or at least those to whom its ruling belongs, are virtuous.”⁵ So too of the family and the local community, in varying ways. The common good of any community presupposes a proper ordering of our loves and a careful corrective to the ways in which concupiscence leads us to prefer selfish and errant desires over those that are truly good for us and for those with whom we live. 

     Certainly, a people capable of moderation, self-denial, endurance, and the cultivation of serious moral character over licentiousness is the kind of moral people capable of the true liberty which our forefathers sought to secure when they gave thanks to God at that first Thanksgiving celebration for giving a new land in which to raise up such a people. By practicing these moral virtues with the aid of grace, we are drawn closer to both God and our fellow man through fasting. When the ground of man’s inner life has been tilled and the fruit cultivated by the experience of fasting and the dutiful attentiveness to daily or ferial demands, his soul is truly ready to reach to the heights in times of celebration. “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest.”⁶

     This concrete expression in time of the ultimate status of the divine things also effects a participation in a communal experience of the summum bonum, the highest good which stands as the purpose of our actions and thereby shapes character. God is rightly esteemed above all and everything else in life is given a clear hierarchical ordering in which the more profound elements of human life are given clear priority over servility and avarice. Man is able to again and again raise his vision — often stooped by the wearisome and mundane demands of life — to see the true spiritual horizon of his life and the life of the community in which he is a part. 

     As early as Abel, it has been the impulse of man to offer first fruits from his harvest in worship. Out of this impulse, the cultivation of the arts as a corollary has arisen and lead to the greatest achievements of human genius. Hagia Sophia, St. Peter’s, Notre Dame, and innumerable other examples of sublime places of encounter with the divine dot the world and serve as cornerstones of man’s experience of tradition, place, and things divine. In a way, even those cultures which were utterly unaware of Christianity established similar monuments. The great pyramids in Egypt and the Americas, for example. Christian and non-Christian alike, these great edifices are integrally bound to liturgical calendars and find their fullest expression therein. 

     What, then, are we to make of the contemporary post-Christian culture’s approach to time? We have a civic religion and correspondent calendar, to be sure, though its objects of veneration and modes of celebration are radically different from that of Christendom. Christmas and Easter remain for some as true religious festivals centered on the right worship of God, though often enough they are experienced as merely pleasant times to exchange gifts, eat well, and rest a while. All Hallow’s eve has been reduced to a the candy-fest of Halloween, while All Souls and All saints have been nearly forgotten. Thanksgiving all too often neglects to give thanks to the source of all good gifts. Most of the other great holidays of the civic and social calendar are even further devoid of a focus on the divine or a retreat from commotion. New Years, The Super Bowl Valentine’s day, etc. Civic holidays remain a significant part of our experience, from Memorial day to the Fourth of July. Amidst this great variety and in our modern pluralistic society is it still possible to share a harmonious and meaningful framework viz a vis a liturgical calendar? 

     Responding to the contemporary dilemma from classical and Christian principles, the answer must be yes. Aristotle affirms the necessity of the cult for the political community in the Politics where he identifies several occupations which are necessary for the state: (farmers, craftsmen, warriors, judges) and what he calls a “primary need: the service of religion, termed a priesthood.” Being neither beast nor god, man must live in political community which demands a unified pursuit of the common good, which lies ultimately in God himself. Such a pursuit is best effectuated when a common experience of the community’s place in time, space, and relation to the divine is cultivated via the ritual celebration of the objects of its reverence. Further, we must make an effort to give the activity pride of place and the appropriate attention for it to flourish at the heart of the community. 

     This is all the more true for the Church which has for its source and summit the worship of God in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Where this remains in the culture today – Christmas, Easter, etc. – we ought especially to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to a deep participation in the liturgical life of the Church. In doing so, we draw spiritual fruit and become a witness to our neighbors of the true meaning and importance of the goods which our society traditionally celebrates. Where modern society has lost the richness of liturgical living or substituted lower goods for higher ones, we ought all the more to immerse ourselves in the liturgical life of the Church, attentive to the seasons which bring us into this shared framework. Here we are provided the opportunity for fitting worship of God and an integration of the matters of this life into our spiritual destiny as we prepare in hope to see him face to face. 

  As the brisk winds of Autumn herald a season of harvest, recollection, and thanksgiving let us not pass up the opportunity to conform the times to Christ. In worship, festivity, celebration, thanksgiving, and recollection of all the good gifts God has brought to fruition in our lives we can individually and communally bring all things into Christ. The liturgical calendar, with its rich tapestry of feasting and fasting, calls us to refocus our celebration on thanksgiving to God for all the gifts he has given and center our hope in that day when the wheat and weeds will be separated. By returning to these roots, we can cultivate a deeper sense of gratitude and connection, not only to God but also to one another. In doing so, we reaffirm the importance of gathering in shared worship and communal feasting, recognizing these acts as vital expressions of our faith and as opportunities to nurture the virtues of generosity, humility, and love. This spiritual harvest reminds us of the enduring cycles of sowing and reaping, of labor and rest, and ultimately, of the profound gifts bestowed upon us through divine grace in communal life.

     Warning his disciples to be vigilant and ready for the coming of the Lord when saints and sinners will be separated like wheat and chaff at the harvest, Christ said, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven.” Knowing not the time of his coming, Christians must treat all time as a potential occasion for the arrival of the bridegroom when the guests must be ready to go with him to the wedding feast. Anticipating the coming days of the liturgical year and their culmination the great feast of Christ the King during these autumn months, we ought to immerse ourselves in the mystagogical renewal brought about by liturgy. We will keep our lamps lit, hallowing every season and all the matter of our lives during our time of labor in which we hope for the harvest of righteousness, learning to sing with the Spirit and the Bride: “Come!”