The king of time

The photograph – that of a scantily clad young actress – was on an inside page of a newspaper. The accompanying story said that the photograph was meant to grace the calendar endorsing a certain gin, and that the girl was chosen because of her “heavenly body and sweet, innocent face.”

Clearly the year was ending, I reminded myself as I put down the newspaper. Time for new calendars for the coming year. But as to this there would be more of the same.  Aside from attractive women, the calendars would surely display scenic places, prominent people, well-known festivals, the like. A number of the calendars might even have themes, such as nature, productivity, patriotism.

How would it be if a calendar had as theme time itself?  Such a calendar can take a cue from Archibald Macleish’s poem, “You, Andrew Marvell.” This is a comment on another, an earlier poem, Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” In Marvell’s poem a man tries to convince a reluctant woman to become his lover, arguing that they do not have the benefit of time: “Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness, lady, were no crime… / … I would / Love you ten years before the Flood; / And you should, if you please, refuse / Till the conversion of the Jews…”  The poem goes on: “But at my back I always hear / Time’s winged chariot hurrying near; / And yonder all before us lie / Deserts of vast eternity.”

Taking off from Marvell, Macleish charts the movement of night: “And here face down beneath the sun / And here upon earth’s noonward height / To feel the always coming on / The always rising of the night….” He goes on to describe the night as it moves from Ecbatan to Kermanshah, to Baghdad, Palmyra, Lebanon, Crete, Sicily, Spain and Africa, where we glimpse “no more / The low pale light across that land / Nor now the long light on the sea.”

A calendar on the theme of time could depict through photographs or artwork an analogous passage of the months.  For January perhaps a shot of swaying Sinulog dancers.  For February, of lovers going through their paces on Valentine’s Day.  A photograph of the Holy Week processions would do for March.  Migratory birds winging up for April, the month when they leave the country for their northern homes, when spring begins to move toward summer.  Frisky little girls dressed up as angels for May.  Children lugging their school bags for June.  Floods for July, the start of the rainy season.  For August, the arrival of the migratory birds coming back to wait out the winter in our warm islands.

September, the fluvial parade in a sea of glowing candles in honor of Our Lady. October, lanzones, the harvests of which reach fever pitch during the month. November, families laying flowers on the graves of their loved ones.  And December, the lights of Christmas.

What if, instead of twelve images, we are to pick just one that absolutely speaks of time?  For me it would be the image of Christ the King.

This is because all time leads to and finds completion in Jesus. Everything that happens, whether calling for celebration or endurance, cries for release from its bondage to time. Through his resurrection Jesus conquered death, which resides in the heart of time, and as a result transformed time itself into a moment of complete freedom, which stays ever joyful and fresh.

Because of this, there is in every calendar the hope of a never-ending year, for which no image will suffice except that of time’s sovereign, the one who has stretched time into eternity – Christ the King.