RBWords

 

     The ancient Greeks had two words for "time."  The first one was chromos which means time in the sense of "What time is it on the clock?"  We get our words "chronological," and "chronic," among others,  from it.  The second term for time is kairos.  We express this when we speak of "an idea whose time has come."  Kairos is an important word in the Gospel of John.  We see it in the quote above from today's gospel.  The evangelist is referring to Jesus' passion and death.

 

     On Good Friday, many parishes celebrate the service at 3PM in the afternoon because the gospels seem to place Jesus' death around that time.  But the chronological "hour" is not as important as the "kairos" hour.  All of this is seen in the gospels as part of God's plan of salvation that would be fulfilled through the suffering of the Messiah.  On Good Friday, a lengthy passage from Isaiah is read which is eerily accurate about Jesus even though written hundreds of years before he came.

 

     I use the notion of kairos in retreat preaching to challenge retreatants to ask, "What TIME is it in my life?"  Jesus seemed to be conscious of that early on in his ministry.  Recall the marriage feast at Cana when he responds to Mary's comment about the wine running out.  "What is that to you and me?  My hour has not yet come."  Perhaps in what is left of Lent, we could make an effort to do an honest self-evaluation and find out what "time" it is in our lives and determine how we might shape our future in God's sight.  AMEN