(Icon: the Resurrection or ἀνάστασις.)
But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. (2 Peter 3:8)And I appointed the eighth day also, that the eighth day should be the first-created after My work, and that (the first seven) revolve in the form of the seventh thousand, and that at the beginning of the eighth thousand there should be a time of not-counting, endless, with neither years nor months nor weeks nor days nor hours. (2 Enoch 33:1)
The Eighth Day is coming—a day of no counting, of no hours, or minutes, or seconds, and of no months or years. All matter will be transfigured and delivered from the curse of corruption and entropy. That is the day without time, for "there should be no more time" (Apocalypse 10:7); it is the life without death—the life of the Age to come.
Christ gave a foretaste of this day when, on Pascha, the eighth day of Holy Week, He rose from the tomb. In doing so, He robbed Hades of those whom death held captive. In the Orthodox Christian tradition we count all of "Bright Week" after Holy Week to be a single, unending day, mirroring the Last Day that is to come.
In that day, each lifetime is but a moment, and each moment a lifetime, for time no longer has measure. Nor is the past lost, nor is the future uncertain; past, present, and future will, in a way, be no more. What is before will come after, and what is after comes before, and all things are summed up in God. "I am the Alpha and the Omega" (Apocalypse 1:8), says God, for all began with Christ and all will end with Christ.
Nothing will be truly lost; all things will persist. In Paradise there will be no death nor decay, nor pain or sorrow, because nothing will be lost.
Yet even now the Christian may gain a foretaste of this Day, by dying to himself and rising with Christ, for the kingdom of God is upon earth. "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21), if you will find it there.
The kingdom of God is in the heart, filled with love; for the heart has become the heart of the Son, and knows the Father, and is filled with the light of the Spirit. To be in the kingdom is to pass beyond this world, and to dwell in heavenly truths. The passage of time ceases to trouble the heart; the Spirit gives the gift of patience, and stillness or rest (hesychia, ἡσυχία).
The illusion of dull matter is pulled aside as a drape from a window, or as a veil, and the light enters, and the true purposes (logoi, λόγοι) of material things revealed. They acquire their sacramental value in the eye of the heart, which now sees clearly. The divine has been united to the created, the invisible to the visible, and all things have been made holy. What is below has become as above, all things being done in type.
It is in such a state of being that the Christian may walk in Paradise even in this life. For having entered into rest through faith and trust in God, and having left his life behind—having crucified himself—the turbulence and change of this world no longer sways him, but he walks upon the waves of the world like St. Peter upon the sea. Like a rock in a raging sea, the water cannot move nor break him, but rather the waves break upon him. The grass bends gently for him; the trees freely yield forth fruit for him; the animals may even become tame around him. Death to him is revealed to be nothing but a shadow; for though a shadow may appear frightening, it lacks real substance. And so the Christian begins to taste the timeless reality even now.
For now, for but a little while, we are caught up in time. But this life will pass like a single breath, and then in a mystery we will awake to the everlasting Day in the sunlight of the eternal Son. But even now we may enter into this mystery in this life, through the Cross, through Baptism with Christ, and achieve for ourselves the rest of the seventh day, "a Sabbath rest for the people of God" (Hebrews 4:9)—a foretaste of that Eighth and final Day.
And in the coming weeks we arrive at Pascha, the celebration of this Eighth Day, when Christ by the Cross and Resurrection made a path for all life to Paradise.
With you, Lord, each lifetime is like just another day, and sometimes each day is a life in its own. There is only the eternal present, a single instant. It has no measure. So then why do we measure years, days, hours, minutes, seconds? I do not know what tomorrow brings. Each day is different from the next. I place no expectations on the days, and in turn the days place none on me. So it all passes along in peace. There, in that eternal present, in Your presence, I find the true kingdom within the heart.
Time is passing, yet eternity is already here.
Have a blessed last week of Lent.
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