November 17, 2013 - Time, Death and our Personhood

November 17, 2013

Time, Death and Personhood

“This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Lk.12: 20)

“The person who “comes out of himself” just simply  to acquire more things does not proceed toward life but only towards death.  When someone uses time only to promote his “self”, he reinforces his own self-interest. In reality, when this time is overly filled with our own “self”, it no longer constitutes the “between” of human persons, and even less,  the space that bridges the human with the Divine Person. Time lived within our own self-interests, far from God, is only time seemingly lived because we do not “come out of our self” towards another person. Time that exists between a person and the things that one wants to grab, or between a person and those who are next to him, those that one wishes just to control and to exploit, in reality is not time at all. It is simply a shift in the desert of our “self” which leads straight to a complete death.”

“Time is truly real and, according to this definition, positive and creative, only when one is perceived within a space where persons “come out of their self” in order to meet one another and, in the final analysis, to come to know the Person of God.”       

Fr. Dimitru Staniloae
From the book
“Prayer and Freedom – transcending nature and death”
“En Plo” Publications, p.121-122

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