SimonMary Asese Aihiokhai
If you have ever been to a Catholic Mass and you listen to the gospel being proclaimed, especially the revised liturgy, which is popularly referred to as the Tridentine Mass, you would have heard the following phrase, “In ilo tempore (At that time or in those days).” I have always wondered why the Church chose to set the reading that way. But I think I can deduce the following insights after some time reflecting on the phrase. The words invite the listeners or better stated, the gathered assembly into a timeless time of possibilities. It is a time of grace. Grace evokes multitudes of possibilities for the recipients. Hence, when the church proclaim, the words of grace that locate God’s promise to be with God’s people in a timeless time that is set within and beyond history, the church is making a faith statement, that God never forgets God’s promise to God’s people.
There is also something about the imagination that wakes up when the church sets the discourse of Christ within the timeless time of grace. The assembly’s imagination opens up to an awareness of place, one that no one can lay claim to in a monopolized manner. At that time means that something happened at a place beyond our reach but one which we can imagine and enter into through the pneumatological turn makes possible. In other words, in ilo tempore is itself a type of epiclesis that is the prayer to the Holy Spirit. What is most insightful about this ritual is that the proclamation of the gospel as the word of God is itself given its divine efficacy by the Holy Spirit. Hence, when the church prays in and with the proclaimer of the gospel the words, in ilo tempore, the church makes an act of faith and enters into the place of saturated grace that the Holy Spirit opens up through the words of Christ who dwells in the boson of the Father. There is a Trinitarian turn in the ritual of the gospel. Only in the timeless time of grace that invites the believers to encounter Christ who dwells in the Father through the Spirit can the place where the drama of salvation be experienced. These words, in ilo tempore takes the community from the time of Adam into the time of the Spirit. It takes the gathered assembly from the place of death into the place of saturated grace.
In this place of saturated grace, where time becomes timeless, the imagination of the church becomes a saturated imagination that makes possible the limitless possibilities of life that the church is meant to embody for itself and for the world. In other words, by conforming to the grace made present in the place and time of the Spirit, the church becomes to itself and to the world the possibility of a continuum of the salvific power of in ilo tempore. Remember, what is most central in the Mass as in all the liturgical moments of the church’s life is that what the church has become in Christ through the Spirit before the presence of the Father, the church is to mediate for the world as well. This is why, the in ilo tempore is a sacramental moment of opening up and being hospitable to the world beyond. Consequently, when the church does this well, the boundaries that exist between church and world are blurred. Both church and world become one. When this fully occurs, we say that the reign of the Spirit has fully dawned upon us. The church is meant to be a medium of epiclesis for the world for this blurring to occur.
So, when next you are at Mass and you hear these words, think about them and let them spark in you a deep sense of awareness of what the Spirit is doing in the world through you. Enjoy!
Reflection – February 22, 2024.
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