At the beginning of the Easter Vigil there are words spoken as the Pashal Candle is being prepared. These words can easily get lost in the activity that is taking place outside church around the Easter fire. So here are the words again; they are spoken as the priest is tracing the cross and the four numerals of the current year: 

Christ yesterday and today

the Beginning and the End

the Alpha

and the Omega

All time belongs to him

and all the ages

To him be glory and power

through every age and for ever. Amen.

All time belongs to him. All time belongs to Christ! Time:

For one person, a precious gift; for someone else, a terrible burden; We know too well what can happen in the space of a year or a moment. Sickness can overtake the world. Falling in love may comically rearrange our priorities. Disappointment or loss drops us down a well of despair. An act of sudden kindness restores our hope.

All time belongs to him.

If time belongs to Christ, then we must learn to trust in him. And think of what it is that the Risen Christ has accomplished for us! 

Death is turned into new life. 

What does that mean for us? Well, think of it this way: Time lost has been regained. The time we have spent grieving our sins, fueling our anger, harboring our resentments, mourning our losses, reliving our regrets can be changed to time lived in patience, thankfulness, perseverance, charity, joy and hope.

For many of us these past twelve months have really tested our faith and made us question a lot of things. And maybe in the stress of daily life we have been looking at the whole course of our life and the way we have spent “our time”. This Easter, as we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, we are asked to see the true light and remember that “all time belongs to him—to Christ”. 

Because Christ has risen from the dead we can live in trust and hope and learn to “spend our time” differently than we have been spending it. We’re grateful that Christ is the healer of yesterday, with its broken dreams and confused loyalties; the healer of words uttered in haste that can’t be unspoken. 

Our Easter joy helps us to acknowledge that Christ is present at the start and end of every journey. Through Christ we can regain the true path.

All time belongs to him, and all the ages…

And because of this time becomes an ocean of possibility, so we must seek its consecration, making the future a holy destination to which we can all travel together.