Retreat Theme The Book of Common Prayer celebrates God who dwells “in light inaccessible from before time and forever.” At the dawn of Creation God brought into being not only the material universe but space and time itself. Indeed, the opening words of the book of Genesis, “In the Beginning…” speak of the dawn of time into which creation is born only so that the Eternal One, transcendent above all, might himself be born in time through the Incarnation. For the Christian then, time is both cyclical and linear, replete with seasons and cycles, yet forever unfolding until, in the fullness of time, all things in heaven and on earth will be gathered together in Christ. (Ephesians 1:10) So declares the Christ of the Apocalypse, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Rev. 22:13)

 

Thus, through the liturgy, the archetypes of chronos and kairos, life and death, creation and redemption unfold dramatically, not merely as a remembrance of things past, nor in the perpetuation of timeless myth. Rather, the liturgy unites past, present, and future in the Eternal Now where Christ is presentified, literally ‘made present’ among his people gathered. In this immersive retreat, Fr. Vincent will invite the full participation of the retreatants in each of the four liturgies of the Triduum, while offering theological reflections on the fundamental role of linear time (chronos) and mystical time (kairos) in the life of faith.