On Festus, every Saturday, the same story. Starting a conference and talking to you always feels utterly inadequate. And there's never enough time to really penetrate in a satisfactory way into the material that's kept. Now, at these conferences, we have, in general, to promote the idea of the Mysterium, its various phases, Mysterium Tremendum, the Mysterium Vipassinosum, and then the Mysterium in its relation to time. And there we were speaking a little because it's not an academic topic.

[01:03]

It's a vital topic. Time, to have time, is of the essence. And one never has enough. So we spoke a little about time in the Holy Scriptures. And I called your attention to the fact that time in the Holy Scripture is not understood only as a measure, mensura, tempus ut mensura, but as an existence, what we call in scholastic philosophy tempus ut duratio. And duratio, duration, again is defined in scholastic philosophy as existentia continuata, existence contained, or existence super-added to existence.

[02:12]

So therefore we spoke about that is not the quantitative element, which is important in the time concept of Holy Scripture, that the quantitative end of one moment after the yoke, one equal piece of time, let us say, after the yoke. Now this determines the idea of time in Holy Scripture, but rather the qualitative element of the existence or the life which builds it. And we saw there already that therefore different beings, according to their different way of existing, have different times. There is the time of God, and that we call eternity.

[03:22]

That is the interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio. The perfect possession, all in one, of eternal life. So then, the angels again exist in a different way at another time. We call it the Evum. A time which exists in the succession of created but spiritual acts. Therefore, not subject to corruption. That's what we call Evum. The tempest is the existence of beings which are composed in their very substance by matter and form.

[04:29]

and therefore subject to substantial fortune. And then we call time that kind of existence. Now, we just spoke about that, of course, this kind of thinking opens up a whole very, to my mind, fertile and good approach, for example, to the development of a wide appreciation of time. and of the use of time, and of the essence of time as far as man is concerned, in whom, actually, this whole process of time again gains a completely different importance and character because he is composed of the spiritual soul as a body. And this spiritual soul is the form. substance should fall, as we say in scholastic philosophy of the body.

[05:31]

And that, of course, again gives a completely different and new character to the time of man. Different from the time of the alien or the time of a stone. So, But this is the important thing that we have to keep in mind, is to approach this to time. Tempus et mensurum, tempus et mensurum, duratio. Time as measure, that is naturally what we call again scholastically an insatiable. It's a relation of the duratio. to a certain measurable or succession which is transposed into space and then made visible. And the way in which it is transposed into space and made visible we call the watch.

[06:33]

That is the watch. This time of Mansurah projected as it were or made visible in the dimensions naturally of space. Because space is this while time is one moment after the other. Space is one dimension next to you. So these dimensions are really, as also later on Kant in his philosophy, deeply and interiorly related to time and space, both in that way as mensura, as measure, and therefore quantitative. Now it is, if we follow ethosologically and consistently the idea of tempus and mensura, It's very interesting, I have, just in preparing this letter, I have studied for quite a while now,

[07:40]

in Karl Barth's dogmatic, you know, that endless dogmatic of this great enemy of all reason. He has written the most voluminous dogmatic that has ever been produced in the history of Christianity. And there is, I think, now he is at the fourth part of the second half of the third volume. This fourth part is a volume like this. So, And there, it's very interesting, of course, the whole thing, this whole tractatus or treatise of time, which has many interesting aspects, suffers, of course, from the complete lack, right from the beginning, of any kind, an attempt even, of a clear definition of time to set, you know, a certain and determined start for what he is going to explain. And there, of course, Mfletz, in the end, for the whole thing, quite flat.

[08:44]

But what you can see there, and I want to call your attention to it in the context, as you remember, of the Mysterium, of the liturgical Mysterium. And naturally, the question which the Mysterium has always brought about, what is the relation are the sacramental mysterium to time. And there are, as I told you, as you know very well, there are all these difficulties which arise out of the fact that we have many masses, but every mass is the sacramental representation of the sacrifice of the cross. And of course, the sacrifice on the cross is, as Holy Scripture says emphatically, it happens once and for all. It happens once and for all.

[09:48]

Once and for all, Christ died for us on the cross. And he does historically not die for us again. And that is, of course, the way of the grave sacrifice. protestant objection against the Catholic idea of the Mass, because Protestant thinking did not understand the sacrament, the sacramental representation, or as we say today very often, the sacramentally made in present again of the sacrifice of the cross. But naturally that affects, and that is and goes in through the whole conception that we have of time. And if we approach time merely, let us say, on the level of, let us say, Tembus at Mansuwa, or after the other in that way, then naturally also our thinking about the sacramental world

[10:57]

I would say our thinking even about Christ, about his presence, our thinking about the church and what the church is, is affected by it. The more we, let us say, interiorly, or let us say mentally or spiritually, sink into the the time as a continuous flow of events, as a constant change from the past to the present into the future, the more that this kind of approach becomes as it dominates in our inner feeling as far as time is concerned. One thing is that the more we do it, the more we are constantly in a hurry. And at the same time, too, the institutions, let us say those institutions which belong, as Holy Scripture says, to the year of salvation, to the acceptable year of the Lord, they lose very much of their, let us say, of their stability, of their, or let us call it, their eternal character, or let us say their remaining character.

[12:19]

and they become more aware they are drawn into the changing flow of the times. And that we can see in the attitude of people, for example, to an old institution like the church. More people interiorly become drawn into what we call today the flow of progress, Because progress, of course, as we understand it today, is mostly technical progress, and technical progress, as a matter of principle, belongs into the whole field of property. And in this whole field of quality, as Jacques Maritain has explained there so beautifully, in this whole field of quality, indeed you can have, let us say, a progress, increase of possession of perfection, one moment, one day, one year after the other.

[13:26]

And maybe in an accelerating pace, according to you know the measure or the degree in which it is a the key to these quantitative and material problems has been done as we see it now in the tremendous development of the atom destruction and all the various results which that has of course it was the great mistake of the West, you know, to consider this technical progress as a matter of quality. And a quality which is limited, essentially, to the white race. Now, of course, we see that that is not quite so. So that that nothing is more easily, let us say, can be propagandized or can expand Again, in the quantitative sphere, as this kind of quantitative progress.

[14:31]

Therefore, the more one is taken up into this kind of thing, the more one also is, of course, at difficulties, let us say, with an institution like the church, which has centuries and centuries of existence and of tradition. And it comes, you know, then one doesn't see the true character of the church, that this tradition of this eternity is a matter of quality. It's not a matter of quantity. If it were a matter of quantity, it would mean rigidity, and it would mean, at last, petrification. The petrification is, of course, not the same as duration. That are completely different, are different concepts. But the Church, of course, the Church, let us say, survival, the Church's continuity is not based on the rigidity of, let us say, quantitative concepts.

[15:40]

But the survival or the duration of the church actually is based on something completely different. It's based on a life. It's based on a new life. It's based on the life of the curious, the life of the risen Savior. That life which we call the Holy Spirit, which is poured out in this, the Lord's day, over the whole world. and which is, therefore, and belongs, as it were, into a completely different dimension, which can in no way be touched by any quantitative measure. St. Augustine has, I'll just call your attention to it, in the 11th book of his Confessions. You know very well that then he speaks about In the beginning, in Genesis, you know, explaining Genesis, in the beginning, God created that matter, so he speaks there about the idea of time and how did time originate.

[16:57]

It's very strange. Again, I just say this as a parenthesis, you know. But I happen to read today Karl Barth, you know, just on this book. Well, Karl Barth is eager, when he explains his idea of time, to first do away, let us say, with erroneous or man-sent ideas of time. And because he wants then to propose, and that's in itself a very good thing, let us say, time as proceeding from God. It's a very good, very wide and sub-divine principle. But it's very strange why it's absolutely wide, it seems to me, in the analysis of Heidegger's concept of time. He, in which God, creation, has no place whatsoever, and the Augustinian concept of time.

[18:05]

And there, of St. Augustine too, he says that for St. Augustine, time is really something that is made, as it were, proceeds from man. It's quite not true. But he expressly states that, and he says that, yes, in the Civitata Dei, St. Augustine has one sentence in which he says, yes, time is created by God. But then, in the Confessions, in his main treatise on time, not a word about that. Now, this treatise on time in the Confessions starts with this sentence. At no time then had you not made anything. For time itself you made. So no time is co-eternal with you, for you stand changeless. Whereas if time stood changeless, it would not be time.

[19:07]

What then is time? And then he proceeds there. Of course, proceeds then from this element of change. And in this way, you know, that he projects time. Then the change, and the change, of course, is the flow of the past and the present into the future. And he says, but the two times, past and future, how can they be? since the past is no more and the future is not yet. On the other hand, if the present were always present and never flowed away into the past, it would not be time at all but eternity. But if the present is only time because it flows away into the past,

[20:08]

How can we ever say that it is? For it is only because it receives to be. Thus we can affirm that time is only in that it tends towards not be. And that is an interesting approach because there we see if you approach time really, let us say, only, let us say on the level of extension, on the level of motion, the level of flow, and try to grasp there or get a hold of it in the present, just as in the spatial, in the quantitative movement within space, In the great difficulty, you know, that that caused quite the antinomy in the old, so to speak, classical philosophy.

[21:12]

Where is it? Something is in motion. Where is it? Where can I grasp it? As present. So that it is as it is. When you approach time on the level of dimension, that means on the level of one after the other, it seems to lose its presence, the character of the presence. And that is, of course, that is a very true statement that we realize in our daily life. The more we approach time, And I say, on the surface of one after the other, the more it escapes our grasp. It vanishes, as it were, into nothing. So for that reason, you know, I wanted to call your attention to this concept of time as it is in Holy Scripture.

[22:20]

in which time is considered an approach, let us say, from its contents, what it contains. Time, in Holy Scripture, are the events which center around, around, let us say, a source. As, for example, we have still this concept of time in the word, the egg. Especially if we speak of, for example, the age of Napoleon. There is a genius, there is a, one can say, a center of radiation, a center of influence, a power, which is able to shape the events around it and to center these events on itself. And that is what we call the age of Napoleon.

[23:24]

And that, of course, was also expressed in the Old Testament. The Old Testament today, or the Old Testament history, is not measured in that way simply by counting years. But it is measured by personalities which support it, or personalities which continue it. In other words, what we say time is determined, or let us say it is made and said by the patriarchs and their generations. So the father, he is the source of time for the children. The word is time is that which is the effect of an inner power. and that we can very clearly see if we concentrate on the idea of the day. The day is time, but such a time which is consists of events knit together and receiving their stamp, as it were, from the sun.

[24:42]

In other words, the stamp of light. The day is all that happens in connection with the sun. And then, as you know very well, the characteristic and beautiful Old Testament idea that it is Mary who is in closest contact with the sun. When the sun rises, then, as we say in Psalm 103, then Man goes out to his work, to his work, at Opus. So those things belong together. The sun. Man winding with the sun and going out to his work. And that is the day. Then we have, we have the night.

[25:44]

The night, the night has also, in the Old Testament, her time, her characteristics. The night has her frailty. But not there. But the rapacious beasts, they, as we say again in Psalm 103, they leave their hiding places at night. And they prowl around to see whom they would devour. howling around to get their prey. Now that is a typical, as I say, deed of the night. You see, the time, day and night, now is filled in its own, filled by certain deeds. These deeds are characterized or stand by the center of that time, the sun, the night. So we have deeds of life and we have deeds of night.

[26:50]

And then, of course, then we can, and you see that right away, that we have to, can easily transfer then to the spiritual life. And then become to the spiritual idea of the day and to the spiritual idea of the night, which is not simply and only a nice metaphor, but which has in itself a deep affinity, a deep reality. It's not only an allegory, but there is a deep inner affinity there. As we say, when we close the day at the beginning of the night, so we are stoned and vigilante. Dear brethren, be sober and walk. because your adversary, the devil, goes around like a lion, seeking who he could be power.

[27:57]

So there is the knight. That is, as I say, the devil's time and the devil's realm. On the other hand, the gay, is eternal and stand by the right of the Son of Justice, of Jesus Christ, the risen Savior. Therefore, to us, the day is what we call the Lord's Day, and that is the Son. And that is so beautiful, too, when in the Apocalypse, you know, the first chapter and the ten words that St. John describes that it was on the Lord's day that he suddenly heard the voice like a trumpet call. And they received their revelation from the cubes on the Lord's day. And that, of course, is then on that Lord's Day, which is in itself a picture, and what I say, a sacramental of the new life, of the resurrection, of the new age of Christ, of the eighth day of the new life.

[29:18]

And there, the whole mystery of history opens up to you. culminating then in the wedding feast between Jerusalem, the bride, and the Lamb. And the light of Jerusalem is there. And there I would say that leads us into the very essence. I only can indicate these things and hope that you think about them, that you take them just as suggestions to think about. You remember we ended last time with the verse 14 of the first chapter of Genesis. And we spoke about or because that, verse 14, that can be considered as the description of the creation, the creation of time.

[30:28]

And God said, let there be light in the firmament of the heavens, to separate day from night. It's very important. That is, I can right away say, the essence of time in the biblical sense. It's the change between day and night, which, of course, has a spiritual meaning. From day from night, to separate day from night. Separation also important. Let them serve as signs, signs that is autot, in Hebrew, and for the fixing of the feasters, and for the fixing of the feasters, muadim, And there we spoke about trying to bring that concept of morit a little closer to you.

[31:37]

Morit, which is one of the Hebrew expressions for feast. But it has the beautiful thing that it is at the same time, you know, means the fixing of a day and a festive gathering. Or let us much better say, the fixing of the day for a meeting. Fixing of the day for a meeting. These two things are combined in the concept moët, and that makes the beauty of that concept. I try to say that, not just through that vowel as a suggestion, really to translate it with the English word to date. Because in English we have that word. One can date somebody. There you have the fixing of a time, but a time for a meeting. So the two things, the day of the meeting, are together.

[32:42]

As you know, in the book of Exodus, we translate that knowledge as tabernacle of meeting. Tabernacle of meeting. or, just as we say, a camernacle for the feasts, a camernacle for the gatherings. Soon, therefore, is really a date, set a date, fixing a time of an encounter. And then, as I told you, it's a beautiful thing to see that here, as the essence of that more. That means, and one can say this too, maybe in that connection, let them serve, that means the sun and the moon, as sunnets and for the fixing of the feast days. Or the fixing of the feast days. And the text then adds the cycles of days and of years.

[33:44]

But the essential thing for the fixing of the feast days for dating in the feast days as time of encounter. And there you can see, you see that here, the very essence of time is considered and the real content of time and the real, let us say, the important event which really fulfills time, I can say, which really fulfills time, is meeting face-to-face, is the encounter, meeting the other one. And then, of course, means the I meeting the thou. It will reduce the language of Martin. The I meeting the thou. And there is man meeting God.

[34:48]

That is the essence of time. That is what gives to time. You see, we are completely away here from the quantitative aspect of time as a flux. And we come to something else of time as... an important event. I would say of time as the place of decision. As the place of decision. Time as the place of decision. That is the important thing. That's what the Holy Scripture always and tends to teach us. To understand time as the all-important and all-decisive opportunity for what?

[35:50]

For meeting God, the encounter with God, the date. Who is there, the bridegroom, who in the feast day in the Jewish war age sets the dates or dates his bride as well? It is God who dates Israel, the chosen people. And there they meet, bride and bridegroom, god and his people that is the essence of time that's the essence of the feast time is really essentially a wedding in the german language we have that you know we have that we call a wedding day you know hope side and hope side high time it's And that's it, isn't it beautiful?

[36:52]

It really makes sense, you know, it makes sense if you consider it in this way. That there is, and that is of course what I wanted to point out to you, see, the whole The revelation which John the Apostle, and that's also so beautifully described in the Apocalypse, he hears the voice coming from the earth, and then he turns around to faith, to seek the faith of God. And then he receives the revelation, and he receives the mystery of time, the evolution of the mystery of time. When what does this mystery of time culminate? In the marriage feast of the Lamb. And what is the Lamb called in the apocalypse? And the light.

[37:54]

The Lamb of Jerusalem. The light of Jerusalem. See, what is the sun therefore? The sun is light. The agape of God. The descending love of God. Symbolized in the lamb. In the victim. That means God has time for us. God has time for us. That is a beautiful, wonderful concept if we think about it. And he has time for us where? At the hour of the cross. In the dead. of the world made man. That is the encounter. There he has time for us. And this time here, and I think everybody who knows life, who knows man, who knows spiritual things, will agree the essence of time is love.

[38:56]

Time is a love feast. That's the essence of time. And that you have so beautifully, beautifully if you take that, you know, and read under this aspect, the first chapter of Genesis. And read, they are all the first day, and then it's the second day, and the third day, and all these days are known but. They are all known but. That means they are all on the quantitative line. They are all in the fluxes. They are all in the order one after the other. As we still have, if you look into your order, into your order, then you find that one after the other, just number, you see. equality of them. That is the time which is there, let's say, for business.

[40:00]

That is the time which is there, let's say, for progress. But for the technical progress, which in the end ends, you know, in that atom of business. That's the one. But then comes, at the end, there comes the sum. the Sabbath. And the Sabbath is there, is the only day that the bread has a name, you see, has a name, the name of rest. And this Sabbath, of course, you take it as it is in Genesis, in the first chapter, The first day that man meets into which man enters, after he has been created on the sixth day, the first day that man enters is the Sabbath. And the Sabbath, what is this?

[41:03]

The rest. But what is that rest? What is that rest? That rest is a feast, a celebration of God, of that agape which remains. Caritas night. Faith and hope pass. Caritas night. Faith and hope belong as a grand time. Caritas is God's time for us. That is the eternity. There we rest. How do we enter into this rest? That, of course, is so beautifully described in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. We have spoken about that in the past. How did we enter into this rest? Today, when you hear his words, don't harm your heart. Today. And today is what? As a date on the calendar, you know the

[42:06]

The 9th of September, what? No. The today which is created by God giving you his time. That's the today. And that means today, God giving you his time, speaking to you, sending his word to you, addressing you. When you hear his word, don't harden your heart. That word, that time which God has for us, is his agony, his covetous, his descending, his forgiving love, that eternal love, the covenant love, the love of the bridegroom for the bride. Therefore, don't pardon your fault. Only love can understand. The real meaning of time to my mind for the Christian, for the redeemed Christian, in the framework of Holy Scripture, is explained in one book in Holy Scripture, and that is the Canticle of Gath.

[43:15]

That is the essence of time. There is the whole meaning of time. And you see, that is, of course, our great desire, our great longing, That is why we are here in Robster. That's why we are here. It's that voice of the canticle of canticles. Kiss me with the kiss of your mouth. That's the Messiah. That God has time thoughts. That's the voice of the bride. That is the idea, we may say so, of the contemplative life. So you understand that is the essence of time. That time which, for example, tomorrow is so beautifully brought home to you. When you approach the altar and when you receive Holy Communion, when you approach the altar, what will you say in the bottom of your heart?

[44:22]

Kiss me, O Lord, with the kisser. And there he comes, the bridegroom comes, the lamb comes, the light of new Jerusalem comes. And when that comes, then what does the church make you see at that moment? Then the church says this, O Lord, I will be mindful of thy justice alone. Thou hast taught me, O God, for my youth and unto old age, and pray here for God to forsake.

[45:05]

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