How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now

by James K.A. Smith

This marvelously strange, time-bending imagination of historic Christian faith is radically different from so many Jesus-ified versions of escapism that resent time and romanticize eternity. Too many forms of Christianity merely endure the present as the price to be paid for reaching an atemporal eternity. As Olivier Clément observes, in the scriptural imagination almost the exact opposite is true: “Eternity is oriented toward time.” It is most acutely in the liturgy of the church that “time is revealed not as an opposition to eternity but as the vessel chosen by God to receive and communicate the truth of eternity.” All gathered together in one frame, these saints across the ages, face to face with Christ and Madonna, bear witness to the sacredness of time as such. “Man cannot open himself to the eternity of God by turning his back on temporal existence. The encounter with the eternal ripens in time, through the lived moments of hope, faith, and love.”