A Teenage Victim

In the news this morning, a 58-year old woman driving a Mercedes-Benz SUV up to speeds of 128.75 kilometers per hour or 80 miles per hour on a city street slammed into a minivan stopped at a red traffic light, killing a 16-year old boy and critically injuring the mother and her daughter.  The driver of the SUV survived the crash with minor injuries.  The injured mother and daughter and the deceased teenage son were victims of a woman possessed by evil.

Do I even care?  I do care [1].  Not only do I care [1] about my family and friends, those who are part of my life temporarily, those who are not a part of my life but whom I see frequently and those with whom I share the same city but never met, I also care [1] about those with whom I share this world but a world apart, those who are in war zones, refugee camps, government offices, grand palaces, at home, at work or at play.  I care [1] because we are all part the whole of creation without regard to time and space and part of this living planet, breathing in the same air, drinking the same water and feeding off the same earth.  Even though we are not in proximity with each other, we are united by time -- the present -- and when one of us leaves us and this place that we once shared, we ought to feel that, just as much as we ought to feel for the ones who are still living and possessed by evil.  Those who have departed need our prayers so that they maybe forgiven and have salvation in heaven since they are not able to pray for forgiveness themselves anymore.  Those who are possessed by evil also need our prayers since they are so consumed by evil forces that they cannot see God anymore.  Our prayers would help extricate them from the suffocating grip of evil so that they would have another chance in choosing God over Satan.

If all of us can function as a whole, within the whole of creation, united to God, then truly we would be doing God's will on earth and it is in heaven.


[1] I must qualify the word "care" because there are varying degrees of care.  Sometimes I wonder if I even care even though I would like to think that I do.  Sometimes I am impatient or upset and care only about myself and that is not good.  Then there are times that I care and pray for everyone.  Those are the times I feel the happiest and like myself the best.

The Possessors Of Absolute Truths

There are two kinds of absolute truths: worldly truths and other-worldly truths.

God, the Father, Jesus, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Mary, the Virgin Mother of Christ, the angels and the most holy saints, possess both truths [1] and we possess our own worldly truths [2].  We cannot re-write our worldly truths that time has cemented.  Time recalls every moment of every truth, but we have dominion over our truths that time has yet to see and record.  In other words, we have total control over the formation of such truths [3].  The epic struggle between God and Satan for our souls rages on continuously in this formative stage -- our every next moment of truth.  Throughout this life-long battle, unyielding faith in the Lord is our weapon and prayers become our shield.  Be conscious of every moment that passes: it is permanent and eternal if Satan wins.




[1] Knowing such truths does not necessarily mean knowing the timing of these truths.  Only God knows when any such truth would be realized.
[2] We do not possess other-worldly truths.  Only by the grace of God are we allowed to know a little, the rest we have to accept on faith.
[3] Free Choice is not affected by the existence of our own worldy truths.  Recall an analogy where the father places a plate of ice-cream and a plate of vegetables in front of his young son.  Even though the son can choose freely, the father knows beforehand he will choose ice-cream over vegetables.  Taking this analogy one step further, a question arises.  Are we ever able to surprise our father some day by choosing vegetables over ice-cream?  One day, when we know what is good for us, when we are able to overcome the sweetness of tantalizing temptations, we could surprise him, just as we could surprise our heavenly Father. 

The Past, Present And Future

From reading Confessions by Augustine of Hippo [1] I am inspired to write once again on the topic of timelessness.  Augustine of Hippo asked "What, then, is time?  There can be no quick and easy answer, for it is no simple matter even to understand what it is, let alone find words to explain it." [2]

I have the words and therefore answer.

Time - its nature is timelessness which is eternal.  The human can only exist in the finiteness of time.  This is the result of  Adam and Eve's Original Sin.  In the absence of Sin, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden would have been timeless because they were made in the image of God, of Perfection in Eternity.

The finiteness of time is only for the flesh of the sinful.  Our minds and souls exist in eternity.  In God's eternity, the continuum of timelessness, the past and the future become irrelevant since everything simply is.

Augustine asked "how do you reveal the future to us when, for us, the future does not exist?" [3]

Let me answer.

Knowledge of the future does not exist in the minds of men due to Original Sin.  Without Original Sin, "the future" - an earthly concept - is also "the present" because man who is without Sin would be perfect and thus could and would make the present perfect.  In perfection, there is no division among past, present and future because perfection is constant.  It does not change.  It is eternal and is timeless.  Even Hell is perfect and timeless.  Surely nobody wants his mind and soul to end up there however perfect it is.

Augustine was having a lot of trouble separating time on earth and timelessness in God's eternity.  He said, [t]he past increases in proportion as the future diminishes, until the future is entirely absorbed and the whole becomes the past." [4]  He was correct, but only in the life of man which is finite.  In God's infiniteness of time, God's infiniteness of perfection, nothing is gained, nothing is diminished because nothing has to be gained or diminished.  It is perfect as is.

Then he asked, "[b]ut how can the future be diminished or absorbed when it does not yet exist?  And how can the past increase when it no longer exists?" [5]  Then he answered it by pointing to the mind where "there is both expectation of the future and remembrance of the past." [6]  For me, reading this is a bit frustrating.  Augustine could not get his supreme intellect away from earthly concepts and the flawlessness of his logic to focus it on Heaven's perfection.  In Heaven, there is no need for logic or reason for Perfection simply is. [7]




[1] Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (England: Penguin Books, 1961), 262-277.
[2] Ibid, 263-4.
[3] Ibid, 268.
[4] Ibid, 277.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] On earth, we need logic and reason to achieve and justify perfection and even then, nothing is perfect, because of Sin.

The Timelessness of Time

I first heard of Einstein's Theory of Relativity in high school but understood none of it. In time, I believed it to be true, that the clock slows for the one who is traveling at the speed of light relative to another who is stationary on earth, and corollaries that point to concurrent planes of existence at every moment in the past and in the future. Now I realize all that is fiction and a waste of genius and that time simply exists as a whole without relative parts or planes, in neutrality without a beginning or an end and as a constant without change. And it certainly exists without being clocked. This realization has led to my conclusion that time is timeless.

Time has a past, a present and a future but exists only in the present moment. The past and future is each a view from the present. A moment in the present is the state of being, or time's present, and the instant and simultaneous aggregation of all that is past and all that is to come, for something that is now must necessarily be a distillation of everything that had been and everything that is expected combined with the current state of being. In other words, any present moment is the sum of time's past, present and future. Since time exists only in the present moment and is also an uninterrupted sequence of consecutive present moments formed by the past, present and future into an inseparable whole, time is therefore timeless.

Time, being a constant, is the same for an adult as it is for a newborn. A newborn exits the womb and exists in the present moment and therefore it has the current state of being. It also has the requisite past and future to form an aggregate that is its present. For the newborn, its past is only its DNA. Its future, limited by the lack of established thoughts and expectations, is its instinct to breathe the next breath and the drive to be fed and held, to observe and absorb. So the infant's state of being, a biological entity with all its permutations and limitations that is its present, together with its short past and future are the infant's present moment. For the adult, its developed character, its thoughts and expectations, both rational and irrational form the past and future, combined with its state of being, similarly defined as that of an infant, form the present, although its present moment is unenviably more complex than the infant's.

Recap: Regardless of the theory that uses time as a reference point, what is made to measure time, how humans spend, monetize or think of time and how things rely on or react to time, time is constantly there. It simply exists and it exists in the present moment, a present moment being defined as an integrated whole of what is past, present and future. When the past, present and future are one and the same in the present moment, time becomes and is timeless.