![]() Plato’s remarkable formulation was further developed by some of the most important Holy Fathers of the Church, among whom Saint Augustine stands out. ![]() Here, significantly, he asserts that time is an “image (i.e., ‘icon’) of eternity.” Just as the created world transposes, at our level as creatures, the eternal model of everything that exists in the mind of God (referred to by Plato as the “Demiurge” = “the Supreme Craftsman of all that is”), similarly, time is the reflection here, in the world of becoming and movement, of the eternity of its own unseen world of spirit. ![]() The first classical author who left us his profound thoughts was the Athenian Plato, in one of his most substantial dialogues, Timaeus. Before seeing how this is done, however, let us reflect a little on time. Just as in any other situation concerning the foundations of our existence, the Revelation fulfilled by Jesus Christ and His Church, “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,” has also brought about, regarding the relationship with time, a truly unexpected solution: living eternity in history. Thus, we often forget that life has a purpose, an end, a conclusion, becoming prisoners of temporality, whose flow makes us forget eternity. Everything seems caught up in an increasingly dizzying rhythm, as if history and time were being sucked into a bottomless pit. “Remember that time is money,” Benjamin Franklin asserted in a sentence that has become the motto of the industrial world. These are, therefore, the two “tyrants” that keep us tied to earthly things, hindering our ascent to heavenly ones: matter and time. It is also a reminder that we live submerged not only in the mire of matter, as Saint Maximus the Confessor says in his extraordinary commentary on the story of the prophet Jonah, but also in time. Thus, I have become convinced that, indeed, checking the time is, among many others, one of the most common distractions. Specifically, what I have discovered is that when I pray, I tend to glance at my wristwatch more often than usual. Over the years, I have found that these tiny objects, useful when it comes to keeping to a schedule, are quite disturbing during prayer. If the use of phones during Holy liturgies is somewhat disciplined through warnings stuck on the doors of churches, on the other hand, clocks are omnipresent. ![]() In these times marked by an increasingly relentless haste, we often lament the lack of time. ![]()
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