INSIDE AMERICA
BY LORENZO ALBACETE

WHEN THE DAY
REALLY BEGINS
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PASSAGE OF TIME CAN BE PARALYZING FOR THE HUMAN HEART, AS DESCRIBED IN A SHORT STORY BY MILLHAUSEN RECENTLY PUBLISHED
IN THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE. ONLY IN THE LIGHT COMING UP OVER A NEW HORIZON IS IT POSSIBLE TO JUMP INTO THE "RIVER OF LIFE."

The new year of 2011 has begun by confronting us with the mystery of the passage of time. Are the past and the future merely arbitrary constructions of the mind? What about relativity? According to contemporary evolutionary biology, does nature have a "favored direction" that allows the concepts of past and future to describe it? In any case, do these types of questions have anything to do with what we experience at midnight on New Year's Eve?
In my case, this experience is strengthened by the fact that my birthday occurs around this time and now I have reached an age at which my death would not really surprise anyone.
When I was growing up, my parish in Puerto Rico had been designated as the Archdiocesan center for the "Nocturnal Adoration Society," and men from other parishes gathered every month to spend the night in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. On New Year's Eve, the church was opened to everyone who wanted to join them. As part of the ritual, the priest in charge would read a meditation on the passage of time–the same one year after year–centered on the question: "Will you be alive the next time this meditation takes place?" "Look around you," the text said, "how many of those who were here last year are not here tonight?" At exactly midnight, the meditation concluded and in the silence you could hear the nearby noises of fireworks, sirens, and other sounds announcing the arrival of the new year. It was truly awesome!
Thinking about it these days, however, I can see now that this ceremony did not really reflect what the Christian faith in Jesus Christ reveals to us about the passage of time–of "human time," that is, of time in the experience of the human heart.
In order to try to explain how I understand it, let me describe the opposite experience, the non-Biblical experience of time that can be so tempting, especially when the aging process begins to manifest itself in our minds and bodies.
Read the following excerpts from the short story "Getting Closer" by Steven Millhausen which appeared in The New Yorker magazine of January 3, 2011. Up until the end of the story, the author has described powerfully the experience of expectation, of looking forward to an event to come (in this case it is a family picnic held every summer near a river in which a nine-year-old boy loved to swim). Finally, the day arrives, and as the boy considers jumping into the river to swim, the following experience strikes his heart: "When you have that feeling [expectation], everything's full of life, every leaf, every pebble. But when you begin, you're using things up. The day starts slipping away behind you. [The boy] wants to stay on this side of things, to hold it right here… In a moment, the day will begin to end. Things will rush away behind him… He sees it now, he sees it everywhere… It's hidden away in things. Under the shining skin of the world, everything's dead and gone… No one can stop it… Everything's nothing… You can't live unless there is a way to hold on to things…"
The sun is about to set and, suddenly, his sister Julia, who has been having a great time swimming in the river, calls to him: "Ahoy, matey." Then, only then, the boy is set free from his paralyzing experience of the passage of time as the path of decay unto death. "…and with a wild cry that tears through his throat he steps over the line and begins his day."
The problem is, of course, that Julia is herself subject to the law of decay and death. What we need is Someone who, making Himself subject to it, broke through the law and can share His victory over decay and death with us.
This is what the Christian faith proclaims: Christ is risen! He has done it! He has conquered death. On the horizon, a new light has begun to appear as the invitation to jump into the river of life and welcome in the heart the Day that cannot end.