7 The Reckoning of the Times By the time you turn to this page, gentle reader,millions of people will have gathered in Times Square as usual to watch the great Secular Odometer turn from 99999 to 100000, as the new year begins, very like the old year, progressing on in the secular imagination toward some longed-for oasis of earthly delights, between the deserts of nothing before and nothing to come. Little do the feasters know that, were it not for Pope Gregory XIII, they would have arrived two weeks too late. The Church teaches us that time springs from and returns to its origin in the providence of God the Creator. Or we might say that time is the rich soil wherein the wheat is sown for the harvest; or it is the arena for the heroic story of man’s salvation, with its fixed center in Calvary, where Christ triumphant pierces the heart of hell with the cross. Or it is the meter of the epic of faith, as we fight the good fight or run the race to the finish. So the Church does not brush time aside. She sanctifies time and elevates it, giving us far more yearly feasts to celebrate than modern man, always a-bustle and always late, knows what to do with.
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