Many are much pre-occupied at the end of this year with "time." However, mostly this is mere chronology, the coming round of an inexact date when the earth will have come to the same point in its orbit round the sun for the 2000^th time. We say "inexact" because, of course, the Millennium doesn’t start for another year yet, the beginning of the First Millennium being recorded as 1 A.D. from the date of Christ’s birth. Now, we mustn’t be churlish about this. People want to celebrate. That’s OK. But, it’s not our time scale; it’s not our celebration. For us the celebration is always of the right time, God’s time, the fullness of time, when God’s sent his Son to earth for our salvation.

It was the right time, God’s kairos, in respect of what had gone before, the time of preparation and expectancy. The Jewish messianic hope had for centuries focused on the One who was to come and cleanse the Temple, to set Israel free, to establish God’s kingdom reign in justice and peace. We cannot say that most if not all Jews expected God-in-the-flesh, although Isaiah’s prophecy of Emmanuel, God-with-us, was to find a resonance in the hearts and lives of those who had met Christ and found him to be such.

Jesus, therefore, came to judge the minds and hearts of many. Some accepted Him as their Lord-in-the-flesh and became children of God. Others rejected Him and unwittingly also became instruments of God’s purpose in establishing His Kingdom and His Church through the Crucified and Risen Lord. So, it was truly the fullness of time because a woman, the Theotokos, had been prepared to receive the Word and that Word lost nothing in establishing His reign. Even death itself was to surrender, vanquished, into the new life of the resurrection.

This fullness of time does not just stretch forward to Christ’s birth; it also stretches forward from Christ’s birth to each and every one of us right now here in this place. He was born in the fullness of God’s time, and in ours, so that we might be reborn in Him. In other words, God has a time for each one of us, in this life, when He comes and desires admittance to our hearts and lives. If we are so pre-occupied with the passage of mere time, Milleniums-‘n-things, we may miss the kairos time when the Holy Spirit visits us enquiring to be admitted. He will not force His way in. He will wait upon our word of acceptance; just like our Lady: "be it unto me according to Thy Word."

I think that many of us are secretly nervous about this acceptance on account of what it will involve. If the Holy Spirit gains admittance into our lives, fully and without let or hindrance, then we know that we shall have to change inside out. There will be many things of which to repent and new priorities in our lives, there will be new attitudes and relationships to forge and more especially with our enemies as well as our friends. We shall have to get used to living our lives by faith and not sight. We shall have to take God at His Word and surrender our familiar anxieties for the liberating wide open road of His Love in which only the next step counts toward the heavenly goal. How much better though to live in the freedom of kairos time than the pinched and narrowing perspective of a chronology which inevitably descends into infirmity and death!