Mainly this blog post is taking one concept that was very important to today’s saint (Vincent of Lerins, from 5th-century Gaul) and considering it (rather than him).

Because Vincent felt that he had wasted a lot of time in his life before he ever became religious (read: a full-time Christian), he fastened upon a phrase used in the New Testament (in Colossians and Ephesians)–one that calls believers to engage in “redeeming the time” we have. The Greek word translated as “redeeming” is ἐξαγοράζω (transliterated as exagorazó). [I know, you didn’t expect a Greek lesson. Even so.] For those with a smattering of Greek, you can see that in the middle of the word is “agora”–a perfectly good crossword puzzle answer for the clue, “Greek marketplace.” [Note: agoraphobia is fear of places where people gather.] And the prefix “ex” means “out of” or “from”; hence, the entire word means to take from or take out of the market place. That is, to purchase, to claim, to pay for and possess.

This means more than just making the most of the time one is given–it means claiming time, using one’s resources for gaining time, taking “time” from the midst of the mundane things we traffic in (the daily marketplace), and bringing it home to ourselves.

What would it mean to remove time–schedules, clocks, deadlines, and calendars–from the core of our lives, and instead redeem time? That is, what if instead of being ruled by the seconds, minutes, and hours in our lives, we instead make love and care and kindness, joy and peace and justice, patience and fun and laughter, grieving and hoping and touching, being and creating and planting, reaping and tasting and praying the core of our lives? What if we redeem time so that these things and not clocks are what genuinely make us tick?!