Preparing for death

Part of our problem with physical death, eternal life and judgment is that we locate them in sequence in chronological time (Chronos) or what may be called “secular time.”  However, in much biblical understanding, time was understood as Kairos, the time of significance. This makes sense when we think of the things we remember. We do not remember every meal we ever have had, but the meals that were freighted with meaning.  Significant time is a kind of higher time, or God’s time, in which significant events are grouped together and not strung out according to their chronology. For instance, in memorial services for those who died during the wars of the nation, the Boer war, the first and second world wars and the Vietnam war are grouped together in significance.

Similarly, the Church celebrates the liturgical year not in chronological time but in significant time as it works its way from Advent to Easter to Pentecost and as it celebrates the lives of the saints. If we consider the times of our lives we may, of course, think of them in chronological time – one birthday follows another – but if we do so exclusively we have no way of seeing that our lives in the faith are determined by God’s time, that judgement and eternal life do not occur only after our physical death, but they are experienced during each moment of our lives, as is the experience of grace. The blindness of modernity to what the Church is ‘on about’ may be sheeted home to its being trapped in chronological time. When God’s time is understood as chronological time it appears to be ludicrous, spawning silly jokes about conversations with St Peter at the pearly gates of heaven.

It is said that we live in a time of the crisis of meaning. Samuel Beckett describes life as giving birth over a grave; there is a brief flash of light followed by darkness. A civilisation cannot persist with such a void of meaning at its centre and personal life is difficult, to say the least. I know suggesting that the meaning of life is to be found in the preparation for death will not be met with enthusiasm, but that is what I do suggest. We no longer have the monastics to show the way and the Church is not brave enough to point it out, but I think this is where meaning ultimately lies, even in its seeming contradiction.