The Great Jubilee: sanctifying space and time
(part 1)
A time of Jubilee is a time when God sets us free of sin and of
other limitations as well. Space and time limit our activity;
but they are as subject to God as are we. God is the Lord of history,
and the call to celebrate a Jubilee is a call to enter again into
God’s space and time and to be set free by him. Jubilees send
us on pilgrimage, because God makes space and places in it holy.
Jubilees celebrate anniversaries, because God makes time holy.
In the plans of Pope John Paul II for the universal Church, the
Great Jubilee of the year 2000 will be an anniversary filled with
many moments of grace, following a schedule of events leading
up to the Jubilee and during it. The Pope has planned as well
a special pilgrimage to the Middle East and the Holy Land to pray
at the places made sacred by the prophets, by the Kingdoms of
Israel and Judah and by Jesus himself. The Archdiocese of Chicago
has also planned special moments of celebration and some pilgrimages
to local sacred places in order to enter into the sanctification
of time and space which began, even before the history of Israel
and the life of Christ, in God’s act of creation.
At the beginning of the Book of Genesis, there are two creation
accounts. The first one begins at Genesis 1:1 and ends at Genesis
2:4. It shows God creating time. The second creation account begins
at Genesis 2:4 and continues to the end of chapter 3. It shows
God creating space for his human creatures. The first account
is a story of the six days of creation and the seventh day of
rest. The second account is the story of a sacred place called
Eden and of the temptation and fall of the human race in the disobedience
of Adam and Eve. Joined together and complementary to each other,
the stories offer a glimpse into God’s creating time and space
and making them holy.
In the first story, time is created on the fourth day, with the
creation of the sun, moon and stars both to give light and to
count out the days, nights and times of the seasons. Time is the
dimension through which creation moves, always headed for its
divinely instituted purpose. The week of creation is a model of
all the times and seasons through which our world will move, set
in motion through time by God in order to reach the fullness of
time, the Great Sabbath of resting in God. Time itself is therefore
sacred, with its culmination blessed and sanctified by God’s own
rest.
For the Jewish people, the weekly Sabbath (on Saturday) has been
a participation in the mystery of God’s making time holy. For
Christians, this sacred time is the great Sabbath of Jesus in
the tomb. Sacrificed on the Preparation Day, the Lamb of God rested
from his labors on the Sabbath, to rise in the new creation of
the resurrection on what the Fathers of the Church termed “the
Eighth Day.” It is for this reason that the early Church moved
the observance of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, the day
of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and of our participation
in his death and resurrection through the celebration of the Eucharist.
The world moving through time is also made up of space. Height,
depth, breadth, the directions of the compass and of movement,
distances both great and small are the dimensions of space in
which the universe exists. The story of the garden of Eden, and
of the tree in the center of the garden, is a story about the
sacredness of space. The Lord walks and talks in the garden. He
is in intimate friendship with Adam and Eve in this sacred place
he created for them.
God’s creating word sets the laws of the heavens and the earth.
As natural events unroll according to God’s law and plan, so rational
human life is directed by the commandments of God, represented
by the primal commandment given to Adam. The refusal to obey this
commandment is a refusal to accept the laws which underlie the
workings of the world. In Genesis, sin is not simply a personal
bad choice; it is a cosmic disaster.
When Adam and Eve disobey and eat the forbidden fruit, they immediately
find themselves in alien territory. Their space is no longer sacred.
The first family, condemned to toil and pain, is no longer a holy
family. For Jews, the model for the Garden of Eden is the Jerusalem
temple, especially as the sacred place described at the end of
the Book of Ezekiel. For Christians, the tree of the garden is
replaced by the tree of the cross, from which the grace of Christ
flows, sanctifying the world. In Christ’s cross and resurrection,
in his Sabbath rest and his being the fruit of the tree in the
center of the garden, all of time and all of space are redeemed
and sanctified.
The divine authorship of Scripture, its inspiration by the Holy
Spirit, can be seen in the beautiful symmetry of both Testaments.
The sanctification of space and time, first announced in the beginning
of the book of Genesis, is seen in its completion in the final
pages of the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible. In the Apocalypse,
the tree of life, the cross of Christ, sends forth living waters
to sanctify the world in space; and the tree of life has twelve
fruits, each produced for a month, to sanctify the world in time.
Since all space and time are holy in God’s creation and holy in
Christ’s redemption, the Jubilee can anticipate their final holiness
at the end of time. In our time and here, in this place, the Church
of Chicago will celebrate a Jubilee year to bring all of us ever
more closely into God’s designs for us and the world. These plans
for the local celebration of the Jubilee will be discussed in
next week’s column. God bless you.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
