As if I didn't already realize I was way behind on my blogging, yesterday I ran out of my little sticky-tabs that I use when I find particularly interesting quotable quotes during my reading. Usually once I've blogged them I put the sticky-tab back in a stack for re-use. So, given that I ran out, I must be way behind on my quotable-quotes blogging. Whoops. That's what happens when you can barely see your monitor for the "to be read" stack in front of it. I put it there in the hopes its inconvenient location would push me to work through the stack more diligently. Obviously that technique has yet to bear fruit... But I digress.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been working through then-Cardinal Ratzinger's The Spirit of the Liturgy. First, I must say that if you're a Catholic, or really even if you're not but still care about liturgy, get the book. Even if you disagree with some of his conclusions, which I don't so far, you'll find yourself a much better-educated person when you're done. This particular quotable quote is one I often try to impress on the now-Catechumen in our RCIA program at my parish, and I'm beyond gratified to see it written by someone far better versed in the subject than I. While you might think it's an awfully deep concept to be pushing in front of someone in RCIA, my honest opinion is that if you don't offer them something to stretch for, a hint of the depth of theology we are only offering them the tip of in RCIA. I want to make sure they know there is always more to be learned, more to understand, more to love. After all, "to love Him is to want to know him, and to come to know about Him is to love Him".
All time is God's time. When the eternal Word assumed human existence at his Incarnation, he also assumed temporality. He drew time into the sphere of eternity. Christ is himself the bridge between time and eternity. At first it seems as if there can be no connection between the "always" of eternity and the "flowing away" of time. But now the Eternal One himself has taken time to himself. In the Son, time co-exists with eternity. God's eternity is not mere time-lessness, the negation of time, but a ower over time that is really present with time and in time. In the Word incarnate, who remains man forever, the presence of eternity with time becomes bodily and concrete.
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