“I wish I had grown up in the 80s. They were the best!” one of my daughters told me.

When I pressed her she enumerated: families were so close, kids had more physical freedom, and there was less technology.

That last one surprised me. Yes, she actually wished that society on the whole had less screen-time. She also loved the fashions and the music. Life just seemed “funner” back then.

When I was little my golden age was Anne of Green Gables-esque. Life seemed simpler. I loved the cozy houses, the way the ankle-boots would have clicked on the wooden floors, the simple but warm decor, and the endless time spent outside twirling among apple trees, running in the forest or fields. I was okay with the strict school structure. And the dresses were so cute.

In Midnight in Paris Gil longs to be in 1920s Paris. He time travels to that era and meets a woman who longs for the Belle Epoque of the 1890s. The film captures a universal truth: “Golden age thinking” is a common human condition – we long for that time in history that seems so much better than ours. Deep down we have a longing for a place of perfect happiness (ahem, heaven), and we think we can create that here.

But our world is not perfect. No age was ever perfect, although some were easier than others. Why? The answer is always the same: human weaknesses – dishonesty, lust for power, pride. Self-centredness in all its forms.

The new year always calls to mind images of time – Father Time, Baby New Year. We review the past and look toward the future.

The concept of time is baked into us as lay people:

  • We speak of “secular” in terms of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, dealing with ordinary, material things. Interestingly the word secular derives from the Latin saecularum, meaning “of the century or ages.” So, secular people are those who deal with the things of time.
  • And when we speak of time we speak of chronological time, which comes from the Greek word chronos. Chronos time is clock time: one minute, one year after the other.
  • There is also another, deeper kind of time – kairos time. Kairos refers to that oft-heard expression – “the fullness of time.” It is completeness. Kairos is qualitative, not quantitative like chronos.

Kairos entered the world for the first time when God took flesh and was born of Mary. God entered chronos. Eternity broke into time.

But kairos isn’t limited to a one-time occurrence in a stable in Bethlehem 2,025ish years ago. Kairos is here to stay. Rather than the tick, tick, tick of quantitative chronos time, kairos is immeasurable and eternal. It’s over and above static chronos. Kairos is, really, that perfection, that happiness we long for because kairos is God himself, meeting us in each moment. It isn’t in an age gone by, it is here now, for the taking.

We get to choose whether we want to remain in the flatness of chronos or to live and move about in both. Our mission really is to bring kairos into every chronos moment and to help those around us to move from merely living sequentially to living in the fullness of time. This is how we “co-redeem with Christ.”

It is the true definition of “living in the moment.” It is the fullness of every moment. It is allowing God to be with us – or rather, remembering that we are always with him, not just in the decisive moments, but in the banal ones, too.

We can experience this most fully in the Eucharistic liturgy. Jesus is always present to us, but in the Mass he is also physically present. Here again, in an ultimate way, kairos bursts through chronos.

So, perhaps our new year’s resolutions can include allowing a bit more kairos to bleed into our daily chronos. And what better way to do this than to live the Mass every day? The Church encourages frequent, even daily reception of the Eucharist for this very reason.

Living the Mass is more than just attending Mass daily or weekly. It means allowing the Eucharist to shape our entire life, transforming all of our ordinary, chronos moments into kairos – acts of worship, love, and service.

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