S1 E4: The Reality of Time

Transcript

Carol Vassar:

From SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut, I'm Carol Vassar, and this is Living in Faith, Hope, and Love. Each week, our Pastor, Father Mark Suslenko, delves into Scripture, shares insights from the saints, prophets, and theologians, and discusses practical ways to cultivate faith, strengthen hope, and embody love in the world around us. Through his reflections and spiritual encouragement, this podcast aims to inspire you to live your Catholic faith with joy and purpose. Welcome. 

In his Christmas Eve homily, Father Mark takes a moment in time to consider the concept of time. For children waiting for Santa, time feels like an eternity. For adults, our relationship with time is a bit more complicated, even fraught, perhaps impacting our closeness with the Almighty. Father Mark addresses that momentarily. First though, our Gospel reading for this Feast of the Nativity: December 24, 2024, which is from Matthew 1:18-25

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary, your wife, into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home. He had no relations with her until she bore a son, and he named him Jesus. 

The Gospel of the Lord

"The Reality of Time,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut

Father Mark Suslenko:

Waiting for Christmas. As a child, it seems like it will never come.  And you wonder, am I going to get what I really want? And the anticipation and the waiting can be so deafening at times as a young child because time passes so slowly, and it never gets here.  

The reality of time. We live in a world of time, and if we stop and begin to reflect on it, we have a very curious relationship with this world of time. It's almost a love-hate relationship. We love the idea of having time, but yet we're so frustrated by it so often. We find ourselves saying, I don't have enough time. There's too much work to do, and I'm frustrated by how little time I have. Time is passing too quickly. Time doesn't pass fast enough. I wish I had more time.  I would love to be able to go back in time. This curious relationship with time really controls our lives quite often. It's how we structure our days. It controls how we think, and it even determines quite often how we feel.  

A byproduct of it is that it often makes our lives very small, and because we often battle with time and have a conflict with time, we deal with what is immediately before us, which we can call the smallness of our lives. It's what immediately needs our attention. It has to do with those with whom I associate myself, my significant others, my work. Organizing the particularities of our immediate time makes our world very small, and in the smallness of that, we lose sight of the bigger picture of our lives. When we're dealing with small worlds, small worlds that concern my needs, the needs of my significant others, and our futures, God then runs the risk of becoming very distant. God is out there in the heavens somewhere because we don't know how to fit him into the small-timed pieces of our world. And so, we become our own masters.  We try to do it ourselves, and we find ourselves very tired. God out there, we are here in the smallness of our lives.  

And then there's Christmas, which is the wonderful feast day that changes it up because we come here and we pay homage to a child born in a manger that our faith tells us is God. All of a sudden, God is not out there. He's right here. And because our lives are so fixed and preoccupied with the stuff of every day, and because they become so small, this intrigues us, and we're captivated by the fact that God has become one like us. But we don't quite know what to do with it. So we acknowledge the fact that God became flesh, dwelt among us as a human being, was born in a stable, and it captivates us, intrigues us. But how do we connect with it? How does it take on meaning for us in what can be our very small, calculated lives? 

Well, I'm sure most of you here today at some point have taken the time to go by a manger scene and look. And you see all of the characters in the manger scenes, and some are much different than others, but always at the center is the baby Jesus. And in most renderings of the manger scene, our Lord is there with arms outstretched, gazing upward. His eyes aren't closed, but he's looking out, and we contemplate the idea of a God who became one like us. We try to wrap our heads around what this means and what import it can have. And we gaze upon it, and we look at it, and we contemplate it, and we wonder.  But have we ever stopped to think, what is Jesus really looking at? What is Jesus looking out at?  Well, Jesus, being God, is looking out at the world He created.  But more importantly than that, when your eyes connect with his, he’s looking into the depth of your soul; the depth of your soul.  

Psalm 139 very beautifully reminds us that every one of us has been knit together in our mother's wombs. None of us, not any one of us, is an afterthought of God. God had each one of us in mind before the world even began. He didn't make us up as he went along. We aren't afterthoughts or simply spur-of-the-moment creations. He had each one of us in mind before the world began.  He had Mary, the Mother of God, in mind before she ever was born, and he knew how Jesus Christ would be welcomed into this world long before the event ever occurred. 

God contemplates the beauty of the world and the beauty of our souls. He sees your potentiality. You see, the problem is when we live in small worlds that we try to control, that we try to organize, that we try to orchestrate. Those small worlds can very easily fall apart. The people who comprise those small worlds, those that we surround ourselves with, may not be there tomorrow, and life can quickly change. If we don't see the bigger picture of who we are, we can become very lost and distracted, and discouraged. But God sees your soul. He knows what he made, and it was good. He knows what you can become. He knows what you can do. He knows that when one piece fails, there's a new tomorrow that can be embraced.  And so the God who is with us, the God who is near us, takes us from the smallness of our lives and puts us into the bigger picture of who we are. He reminds us that we're on this bigger journey, not a journey that ends here, but with the eternal life of God's abundant, unconditional love. The God who is near us reminds us that, as our small worlds sometimes crumble apart, ultimately, by his grace, all is well, and all will continue to be well.  With that knowledge, we can do powerful and great things. The message of Christmas changes it up and takes God from the distant heavens and makes him real for us right now, gazing into the beauty of each of our souls.

Carol Vassar:

Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. If you like what you've heard today, please subscribe to Living in Faith, Hope, and Love on your favorite podcast app and take a moment to leave a review.

SS. Isidore and Maria is an active parish community, so whether you’re a long-time parishioner or are just getting to know us through this podcast, we welcome you to join us at Masses or any of our other community events and services. Visit our parish website - isidoreandmaria.org - for a full schedule of Masses, services, and other happenings. That's isidoreandmaria.org. We're also active on Facebook and Instagram.

On behalf of Father Mark, I'm Carol Vassar, and we thank you for listening to this episode of Living in Faith, Hope, and Love.