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A noted French spiritual writer named Father de Caussade wrote a famous little book entitled The Sacrament of the Present Moment. It might have been inspired by our text from St. Paul, just as St. Paul was inspired by a passage from the prophet Isaiah (49:8). The church year follows the agricultural year, and the season of Lent, which we have just begun, is the seed time, in which we prepare for an abundant spiritual harvest in the spring of Easter.

In the church there can be excessive preoccupation with both the past and the future. Today fundamentalists and historical critics fiercely debate whether or not the stories in the Bible took place exactly as they are narrated, and in Paul’s own day there were some Christians who were so taken up with their future hope that the world was about to come to an end that they actually stopped work (2 Thessalonians 3:11). Paul was obliged to decree, “If anyone will not work, let him not eat” (v. 10), an injunction which was taken over by the old Soviet constitution, without attribution!

Today there are Christians caught up by the Bible’s apocalyptic imagery, whose futuristic visions have entered the popular culture in productions like Star Wars. I do not mean to disparage the life of the imagination, but the fact remains that only the present actually exists.

In individual lives also there are those who live in the past. Some elderly people can remember exactly what happened forty years ago, but not what just happened today. And we all know people who live in the future, hoping, like Mr. Micawber, that “something will turn up.” These are all tragic cases, because the precious gift of life can only be lived in the present, and it is sad to see people frittering their lives away, either regretting what they cannot change or anticipating what they are powerless to bring about.

When David’s child by Bathsheba died, he asked his courtiers the rhetorical question, “Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). The past, like the dead, does not return. We may learn from it, but we cannot relive it. “Now is the accepted time,” the sacrament of the present moment.

When I was in grammar school, we all had to memorize a poem from the Sanskrit which you may also know. With it I would like to close:

Listen to the exhortation of the Dawn.
Look to this day, for it is life, the very light of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of our existence:
The glory of action, the bliss of growth, the splendor of beauty.
For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision.
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the exhortation of the Dawn.

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