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LOST TIME AND THE ETERNAL PRESENT: AGOSTINO FOR THE TIME-HUNGRY CONTEMPORARY MAN

The past is no more, the future is not yet. It would seem that only the present exists. But the present is also problematic. If it had a duration, it would be divisible into a before and an after, therefore i would no longer be present. The present, to be such, it must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no longer and what is not yet. But how can something that has no duration constitute the reality of time?

— Theologica —

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Contemporary society lives a schizophrenic relationship with time. On one side, it is the most precious asset, a perennially scarce resource.

Our life is marked by busy agendas, pressing deadlines and the overwhelming feeling of "never having time". Efficiency, the speed, the optimization of every moment have become the new categorical imperatives of a humanity that runs breathlessly, anxiously often without knowing the destination. Man today is hungry for time, a hunger that today seems to increasingly take up space in the soul and spirit. Indeed, often the hunger for time visibly affects the most fragile, with the many generalized anxiety syndromes, panic attacks and other mental pathologies. Paradoxically, on the other side, this longed-for and measured time escapes us, it dissolves into a series of commitments that leave a feeling of emptiness, of incompleteness. In the era of instant connection, we are increasingly disconnected from the present, projected towards a future that never arrives or anchored to a past that cannot be changed. We are rich in moments, but poor in time lived.

This experience of fragmentation and anguish was lucidly analyzed by the philosopher Martin Heidegger, almost a century ago. For the German philosopher, human existence (the To be there, l’being-there) it is intrinsically temporal. Man does not "have" time, but "it is" time. Our existence is a «be-for-death», a continuous projection towards the future, aware of being finite people, limited and not eternal. Authentic time, per Heidegger, it is not the homogeneous sequence of moments measured by the clock (called "vulgar" time), but the openness to the three dimensions of existence: the future (the project), the past (being-thrown) and the present (de-jection in the world). Anguish in the face of death and one's limitations, so, it's not a negative feeling to escape, but the condition that can reveal to us the possibility of an authentic life, in which man takes ownership of his own temporality and his own finite destiny[1].

Although profound, however, this analysis remains horizontal, confined in the immanence of an existence that ends with death. The horizon is nothingness. This is where the Christian reflection, e, in particular, the genius of Saint Augustine of Hippo, opens up a radically different perspective: vertical, transcendent[2]. Augustine does not limit himself to describing the experience of time, but he questions it until it becomes a way to question God. In this question, discovers that the solution to the riddle of time is not found in time itself, but outside of it, in the Eternity that founds and redeems him.

In Book XI of his confessions, Augustine addresses a seemingly naive question with disarming honesty, but theologically explosive: «What was God doing?, before he made heaven and earth?» (What did God do before he created the heavens and the earth?)[3]. The question presupposes a "before" creation, a time when God would exist in a kind of idleness, waiting for the right moment to act. Augustine's response is a conceptual revolution that dismantles this assumption at its root. He doesn't answer, evading the question with a joke («He prepared hell for those who investigated mysteries that were too lofty», as some suggested), but it demolishes it from the inside. There is no "before" creation, because time itself is a creature. God did not create the world In the time, ma with the weather: «You are the creator of all time», writes Doctor D'Ippona[4]. Before creation, simply, there was no time.

This intuition opens the way to understanding the nature of divine eternity. Eternity is not an infinitely extended time, an "always" that extends endlessly into the past and the future. This would still be a conception “temporal" of eternity. The eternity of God is the total absence of succession, the perfect and simultaneous fullness of an endless life. To use a classic image of theology, God is one Now standing, an "eternal present"[5]. In Him there is no past (memory) no future (wait), but only the pure and immutable act of His Being. «Your years are just one day», says Augustine, turning to God, «and your day is not every day, but today, because your today does not give way to tomorrow and it does not happen to yesterday. Your today is eternity"[6].

Catholic doctrine he formalized this concept by defining eternity as one of the divine attributes, one of the elements that makes up the "DNA" of God. God is immutable, absolutely perfect and simple. Temporal succession implies change, a passage from potency to act, which is inconceivable in Him who is "Pure Act", as taught by St. Thomas Aquinas[7]. Therefore, every attempt to apply our temporal categories to God, which are categories of us men who are in time, it is doomed to fail. He is the Lord of time precisely because he is not a prisoner of it.

«So what is time??». Once God's "extraterritoriality" with respect to time has been established, Agostino finds himself in front of the second, and perhaps more difficult, issue: define the nature of time itself. It is here that the famous paradox that has fascinated generations of thinkers emerges: «So what is the time?? If no one asks me, scio; I would like to explain to the inquirer, I don't know» (So what is time?? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to anyone who asks me, I do not know)[8] . This statement is not a statement of ignorance and agnosticism, but the starting point of a profound spiritual and phenomenological investigation. Augustine experiences the reality of time, lives it, the measurement, yet he is unable to enclose it in a concept. A process of dismantling the common beliefs of one's century then begins. Time is perhaps the movement of celestial bodies, of the sun, of the moon and stars? No, he replies, because even if the heavens stopped, a potter's vessel would continue to turn, and we would measure its movement over time. The weather, so, it is not the movement itself, but the measure of movement. But how can we measure something so elusive?

The past is no more, the future is not yet. It would seem that only the present exists. But the present is also problematic. If it had a duration, it would be divisible into a before and an after, therefore i would no longer be present. The present, to be such, it must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no longer and what is not yet. But how can something that has no duration constitute the reality of time?

The Augustinian solution is as ingenious as it is introspective. After looking for time in the outside world, in the skies and in objects, Agostino finds him inside, in the soul of man. Time has no ontological consistency outside of us; its reality is psychological. It's one distension of the mind, a "distension" or "dilation" of the soul. How it works? We see …

The human soul has three faculties which correspond to the three dimensions of time:

1. memory (memory): Through it, the soul makes present what is past. The past no longer exists in re, but it exists in the soul as a current memory.
2. The waiting (expectation): Through it, the soul anticipates and makes present what is not yet. The future doesn't exist yet, but it exists in the soul as a present expectation.
3. Attention (attention O bruised): Through it, the soul focuses on the present moment, which is the point at which waiting turns into memory.

When we sing a song, Agostino explains with a beautiful example, our soul is "stretched out". The entire song is present in the wait before starting; as the words are spoken, they move from expectation to attention and finally are deposited in memory. The action takes place in the present, but it is made possible by this continuous «détente” of the soul between the future (which shortens) and the past (which lengthens)[9].The weather, so, it is the measure of this impression that things leave on the soul and that the soul itself produces.

Augustinian speculation, despite being of the highest philosophical and theological level, it is not a simple intellectual exercise. It offers all of us today a key to redeeming our experience of time and to living in a more authentic and spiritually fruitful way.. I therefore offer three reflections that arise from the Augustinian perspective.

Our daily life is dominated by Chronos, quantitative time, sequential, measured by the clock. It's the time for efficiency, of productivity, of anxiety, we said at the beginning. Augustine's reflection invites us to discover the Kairòs, qualitative time, the "favorable moment", the moment full of meaning in which eternity intersects our history. If God is an "eternal present", then every present of ours, every "now", it is the privileged place of meeting with Him. Augustinian teaching urges us to sanctify the present, to live it with attention, with full awareness. Instead of constantly escaping into the future of our projects or the past of our regrets, we are called to find God in the ordinariness of the present moment: in prayer, in work, in relationships, in the service. It is the invitation to experience the spirituality of the "present moment", dear to many masters of interior life.

There is a place and a time where the Kairos breaks into Chronos supremely: the Sacred Liturgy, and in particular the celebration of the Eucharist. During Mass, the time of the Church is connected to the eternal present of God. The sacrifice of Christ, happened once and for all in history (ephapax), it is not "repeated", but «re-presented», made sacramentally present on the altar[10] Past, present and future converge: let's remember the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ (past), we celebrate His real presence among us (here I'm) and we anticipate the glory of His return and the eternal banquet (future)[11]. The Liturgy is the great school that teaches us to live time in a new way, no longer as an inexorable escape towards death, but as a pilgrimage full of hope towards the fullness of life in the eternity of God.

In the end, the conception of time come distension of the mind offers us profound consolation. The "détente" of the soul between memory and waiting, which for the man without faith can be a source of anguish (the weight of the past, the uncertainty of the future), for the Christian it becomes the space of faith, of hope and charity. Memory is not just a reminder of our failures, but it is above all memory of salvation, memory of the wonders that God has worked in the history of salvation and in our personal lives. It is the foundation of our faith. Waiting is not anxiety about an unknown future, but the certain hope of the definitive encounter with Christ, the blessed vision promised to the pure in heart. And attention to the present becomes the space of charity, of concrete love for God and neighbor, the only act that "remains" for eternity (1 Color 13,13).

Our life moves, as in a spiritual breath, between the grateful memory of the grace received and the confident expectation of the promised glory. In this way, the Augustinian man is not crushed by time, but he lives in it like a temporary tent, with the heart already projected towards the celestial homeland, where God will be "all in all" and where time will dissolve into the unique, eternal and beatifying today of God.

Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, 12 November 2025

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NOTE

[1] M. Heidegger, Being and Time,1927. In particular, the sections dedicated to the existential analysis of temporality: First section § 27; Second Section. §§ 46-53; Second Section §§ 54-60 e §§ 65-69.

[2] A theme so important and felt by contemporary culture that these days the actor Alessandro Preziosi is taking a show about Augustine and time around Italy (WHO).

[3]Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions, XI, 12, 14. «What did God do before he created the heavens and the earth?»

[4] Ibid., XI, 13, 15.

[5] The classical definition of eternity is found in Boethius, On the consolation of philosophy, V, 6: «Eternity is the endless and complete possession of life» («Eternity is entire possession, simultaneous and perfect of an interminable life"). This definition has been adopted by all scholastic theology.

[6]The Confessions, XI, 13, 16.

[7] S. Thomas Aquinas, QUESTION, Ia, q. 9 («The immutability of God») e q. 10 («The eternity of God»).

[8]The Confessions, XI, 14, 17.«So what is time?? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to anyone who asks me, I do not know"

[9] The Confessions, XI, 28, 38.

[10] Catechism of the Catholic Church, NN. 1085, 1362-1367.

[11] The term ephapax (one time) is a Greek word found in the New Testament, crucial to understanding the unique and definitive nature of Christ's sacrifice. The main source of this term is the Letter to the Hebrews. This New Testament writing builds a long and profound parallel between the Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament and the high priesthood of Christ. The most significant steps are the following:

• Jews 7, 27: Talking about Christ as high priest, the author says that He «does not need every day, like the other high priests, to offer sacrifices first for one's own sins and then for those of the people: in fact he did it once and for all (ephapax), offering himself". Here it is emphasized that, unlike the Jewish priests who had to continually repeat the sacrifices, Christ's sacrifice is unique and definitive.
• Jews 9, 12: «[Christ] entered once and for all (ephapax) in the sanctuary, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by virtue of his own blood, thus obtaining an eternal redemption ". The verse highlights that the effectiveness of Christ's sacrifice is not temporary, but eternal.
• Jews 10, 10: “By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, Once for all (ephapax)». Here our sanctification is directly connected to this unique and unrepeatable event.

The concept is also found in other passages of the New Testament, as in the Letter to the Romans (6, 10), where Sao Paulo, speaking of the death and resurrection of Christ, dice: «As for his death, he died to sin once and for all (ephapax)».

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THE LOST TIME AND THE ETERNAL PRESENT: AUGUSTINE FOR THE CONTEMPORARY MAN STARVED OF TIME

The past no longer exists; the future is not yet. It would seem, then, that only the present exists. But even the present is problematic. If it had duration, it would be divisible into a before and an after — and thus it would no longer be the present. The present, to be what it is, must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no more and what is not yet. But how can that which has no duration constitute the reality of time?

— Theologica —

.

Contemporary society lives in a schizophrenic relationship with time. On the one hand, time has become our most precious possession, an ever-scarce resource. Our lives are ruled by crowded schedules, relentless deadlines, and the oppressive sensation of “never having enough time.” Efficiency, speed, and the optimisation of every instant have become the new categorical imperatives of a humanity rushing breathlessly forward, often without even knowing its destination. Modern man is starved of time¹ — a hunger that increasingly devours the soul and the spirit. Indeed, this hunger for time visibly afflicts the most fragile among us, manifesting itself in the many forms of generalised anxiety, panic attacks, and other mental disorders.

Paradoxically, however, this time so longed for and so precisely measured constantly escapes us. It dissolves into a sequence of tasks and commitments that leave behind only a sense of emptiness and incompleteness. In the age of instant connection, we are increasingly disconnected from the present — projected towards a future that never seems to arrive, or chained to a past that cannot be changed. We are rich in moments, yet poor in lived time.

This experience of fragmentation and anguish was lucidly analysed almost a century ago by the philosopher Martin Heidegger². For the German thinker, human existence (To be there, the “being-there”) is intrinsically temporal. Man does not “possess” time — he is time. Our existence is a “being-toward-death,” a continual projection towards the future, fully aware of our finitude, limitation, and non-eternity.

Authentic time, for Heidegger, is not the homogeneous sequence of instants measured by the clock — what he calls vulgar time — but rather the openness to the three dimensions of existence: the future (as project), the past (as thrownness), and the present (as being-in-the-world). The anxiety that arises before death and our own limitations is therefore not a negative feeling to be avoided, but the very condition that can reveal to us the possibility of an authentic life, in which man takes possession of his own temporality and his finite destiny.

Profound as it is, this analysis nevertheless remains horizontal — confined within the immanence of an existence that ends with death. Its horizon is the nothingness. It is precisely here that Christian thought, and above all the genius of Saint Augustine of Hippo, opens a radically different perspective: a vertical and transcendent one. Augustine does not merely describe the experience of time; he interrogates it until it becomes a path by which he interrogates God Himself. And in this questioning he discovers that the solution to the enigma of time is not to be found within time itself, but beyond it — in the Eternity that grounds and redeems it.

In Book XI of his Confessions, Augustine confronts with disarming honesty a question that seems naïve yet is theologically explosive: «What was God doing?, before he made heaven and earth?» — “What was God doing before He created heaven and earth?”³. The question presupposes a before creation, a time in which God might have existed in a sort of divine idleness, waiting for the right moment to act. Augustine’s response is a conceptual revolution that dismantles this assumption at its very root. He does not evade the question with the witty remark attributed to some (“He was preparing hell for those who pry into mysteries too high for them”), but rather refutes it from within. There was no “before” creation, for time itself is a creature. God did not create the world in time but with time: “Thou art the maker of all times,” writes the Doctor of Hippo. Before creation, there simply was no time⁴.

This intuition opens the way to the understanding of the divine eternity. Eternity is not an infinitely extended duration — a “forever” stretching endlessly backward and forward. Such would still be a temporal notion of eternity. God’s eternity is the total absence of succession, the perfect and simultaneous fullness of life without end. To use a classical image of theology, God is a Nunc stans — an “eternal now”⁵. In Him there is neither past (memory) nor future (expectation), but only the pure and immutable act of His Being. “Thy years are one day,” says Augustine to God, “and Thy day is not every day, but today; for Thy today yields not to tomorrow, nor does it follow yesterday. Thy today is eternity”⁶.

Catholic doctrine has formalised this insight by defining eternity as one of the divine attributes — one of the essential elements that compose the very ‘DNA’ of God. God is immutable, absolutely perfect, and simple. Temporal succession implies change, a passage from potentiality to act, which is inconceivable in Him who is Pure Act, as taught by Saint Thomas Aquinas⁷.

Therefore, every attempt to apply our human temporal categories to God — categories that belong to us precisely because we are within time — is bound to fail. He is the Lord of time precisely because He is not its prisoner.

“What, then, is time?” Once Augustine has established God’s extraterritoriality in regard to time, he faces a second and perhaps even more arduous question: to define the nature of time itself. Here emerges the celebrated paradox that has fascinated generations of thinkers: «So what is the time?? If no one asks me, scio; I would like to explain to the inquirer, I don't know». — “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I do not know”⁸. This statement is not a confession of ignorance or agnosticism, but the point of departure for a profound spiritual and phenomenological inquiry.

Augustine experiences the reality of time — he lives it, he measures it — and yet he cannot enclose it within a concept. Thus begins a process of dismantling the common assumptions of his age. Is time perhaps the movement of the heavenly bodies, of the sun, the moon, and the stars? No, he answers, for even if the heavens were to stand still, the potter’s wheel would continue to turn, and we would still measure its motion in time. Time, therefore, is not movement itself but the measure of movement. Yet how can we measure something so elusive?

The past no longer exists; the future is not yet. It would seem, then, that only the present exists. But even the present is problematic. If it had duration, it would be divisible into a before and an after — and thus it would no longer be the present. The present, to be what it is, must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no more and what is not yet. But how can that which has no duration constitute the reality of time?

Augustine’s solution is as ingenious as it is introspective. After seeking time in the external world — in the heavens and in material things — he finds it within, in the depths of the human soul. Time has no ontological substance outside ourselves; its reality is psychological. It is a distension of the mind, a “stretching” or “distension” of the soul. The human soul possesses three faculties corresponding to the three dimensions of time: memory (memory), by which the soul makes the past present; expectation (expectation), by which the soul anticipates and makes present what is not yet; and attention (attention or bruised), by which the soul focuses on the present instant, the point at which expectation is transformed into memory.

When we sing a hymn, Augustine explains in a beautiful example, our soul is “stretched.” The entire song is present in expectation before it begins; as the words are sung, they pass from expectation to attention, and finally they rest in memory. The action unfolds in the present, yet it is made possible by this continuous “stretching” of the soul between the future (which shortens) and the past (which lengthens). Time, therefore, is the measure of this impression that things leave upon the soul — and that the soul itself impresses upon them⁹.

Although Augustine’s speculation reaches the highest levels of philosophical and theological depth, it is far from being a mere intellectual exercise. It offers, rather, to each of us today a key by which to redeem our own experience of time and to live in a way that is more authentic and spiritually fruitful. Three reflections arise, therefore, from the Augustinian perspective.

Our daily life is dominated by Chronos — quantitative time, sequential, measured by the clock. It is the time of efficiency, productivity, and anxiety, as we noted at the beginning. Augustine’s reflection invites us to rediscover Kairos — qualitative time, the “favourable moment,” the instant filled with meaning in which eternity intersects our history. If God is an “eternal present,” then every present moment, every now, becomes the privileged place of encounter with Him. Augustine’s teaching urges us to sanctify the present, to live it with attentio, with full awareness. Instead of constantly fleeing into the future of our projects or the past of our regrets, we are called to find God in the ordinariness of the present moment: in prayer, in work, in relationships, in service. It is the invitation to live the spirituality of the “present moment,” so dear to many masters of the interior life.

There is a place and a time where Kairos breaks into Chronos in its most supreme form: the Sacred Liturgy, and in particular the celebration of the Eucharist. During the Holy Mass, the time of the Church is joined to the eternal present of God. The Sacrifice of Christ — accomplished once for all in history (ephapax)¹¹ — is not “repeated” but “re-presented,” made sacramentally present upon the altar. Past, present, and future converge: we recall the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ (past); we celebrate His real presence in our midst (present); and we anticipate the glory of His return and the eternal banquet (future)¹⁰. The Liturgy is the great school that teaches us to live time in a new way — no longer as a relentless flight towards death, but as a hopeful pilgrimage towards the fullness of life in God’s eternity.

Finally, the conception of time as distentio animi offers profound consolation. The “stretching” of the soul between memory and expectation — which for the man without faith may be a source of anguish (the weight of the past, the uncertainty of the future) — becomes for the Christian the very space of faith, hope, and charity. Memory is not merely the recollection of our failures; it is above all memoria salutis — the remembrance of the wonders that God has wrought in the history of salvation and in our personal lives. It is the foundation of our faith. Expectation is not the anxiety of an unknown future, but the sure hope of the definitive encounter with Christ, the beatific vision promised to the pure of heart. And attention to the present becomes the space of charity — of concrete love of God and neighbour — the one act that “abides” for eternity (1 Color 13:13).

Our life thus moves, as in a spiritual breath, between the grateful remembrance of grace received and the confident expectation of the glory promised. In this way, the Augustinian man is not crushed by time but dwells within it as within a provisional tent, his heart already turned towards the heavenly homeland where God shall be “all in all” — and where time itself shall dissolve into the single, eternal, and beatifying today of God.

 

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, on the 12th of November, 2025

NOTES

1. M. Heidegger, Being and time (Being and Time), 1927, especially the sections devoted to the existential analysis of temporality: First Division § 27; Second Division §§ 46-53; Second Division §§ 54-60 and §§ 65-69.
2. This theme is so present in contemporary culture that it is even the subject of recent Italian stage performances on Augustine and time.
3. Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones, XI, 12, 14: «What was God doing?, before he made heaven and earth?»
4. Ibid., XI, 13, 15.
5. Boethius, On the consolation of philosophy, V, 6: «Eternity is the endless and complete possession of life».
6. Confessiones, XI, 13, 16.
7. Thomas Aquinas, QUESTION, I, q. 9 (“On the Immutability of God”) and q. 10 (“On the Eternity of God”).
8. Confessiones, XI, 14, 17.
9. Confessiones, XI, 28, 38.
10. Catechism of the Catholic Church, NN. 1085, 1362-1367.
11. On the term ephapax (one time), see Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10; Romans 6:10 — indicating the definitive and unrepeatable character of Christ’s sacrifice, “once for all.”

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LOST TIME AND THE ETERNAL PRESENT: SAINT AUGUSTINE FOR THE CONTEMPORARY MAN HUNGRY FOR TIME

The past is no longer, the future is not yet. It would seem that only the present exists. But even the present is problematic. If it had duration, It would be divisible into a before and an after, and would cease to be present. The present, to be, It must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no longer and what is not yet. But how can something without duration constitute the reality of time??

— Theologica —

.

contemporary society lives a schizophrenic relationship with time. On the one hand, This has become the most precious asset, a perpetually scarce resource. Our lives are marked by saturated agendas, Pressing deadlines and the oppressive feeling of “never having time”. The efficiency, The speed and optimization of each moment have become the new categorical imperatives of a humanity that runs busily., many times without knowing your goal. Modern man is hungry for time², a hunger that increasingly devours the soul and spirit. In fact, This hunger for time visibly hits the most fragile, manifesting itself in multiple forms of generalized anxiety, panic attacks and other mental disorders.

Paradoxically, however, that time so longed for and so meticulously measured escapes us. It dissolves into a sequence of commitments that leave behind a feeling of emptiness and incompleteness.. In the age of instant connection, we are increasingly disconnected from the present: projected towards a future that never arrives or anchored in a past that cannot be changed. We are rich in moments, but poor in lived time.

This experience of fragmentation and anguish was lucidly analyzed almost a century ago by the philosopher Martin Heidegger¹. For the German thinker, human existence (To be there, the "being-there") It is inherently temporary.. Man does not "own" time: he is time. Our existence is a “being-for-death”, a continuous projection towards the future, fully aware of our finitude, limitation and not eternity.

authentic time, for Heidegger, It is not the homogeneous sequence of moments measured by the clock - what he calls "vulgar" time -, but the openness to the three dimensions of existence: the future (as project), the past (like being thrown) and the present (how to be-in-the-world). Anguish in the face of death and one's own limitations is not, therefore, a negative feeling to escape from, but the condition that can reveal to us the possibility of an authentic life, in which man appropriates his own temporality and his finite destiny.

No matter how deep, this reflection remains, however, in the horizontal plane, confined in the immanence of an existence that ends with death. Your horizon is nothing. It is precisely here where Christian thought, and especially the genius of Saint Augustine of Hippo, opens a radically different perspective: vertical and transcendent. Augustine does not limit himself to describing the experience of time, but interrogates it until it becomes a path to interrogate God himself. And in this search he discovers that the solution to the enigma of time is not found in time itself., but outside of it: in the Eternity that grounds it and redeems it.

In Book XI of his Confessions, Augustine addresses a question that seems naive with disarming sincerity., but it is theologically explosive: «What was God doing?, before he made heaven and earth?» — «What did God do before creating heaven and earth?»³. The question presupposes a “before” of creation, a time when God would have existed in a kind of divine leisure, waiting for the right moment to act. Augustine's response is a conceptual revolution that dismantles that assumption at its roots.. He does not evade the question with the ingenious response attributed to some ("He prepared hell for those who investigate mysteries that are too high"), but refutes it from within. There is no “before” of creation, because time itself is a creature. God did not create the world in the time, sino with the time: «You are the architect of all time», writes the Doctor of Hippo. Before creation, simply, there was no time⁴.

This intuition opens the way towards understanding divine eternity. Eternity is not an infinitely extended duration—an “ever” that stretches endlessly into the past and the future—. Such would still be a temporal conception of eternity.. God's eternity is the total absence of succession, the perfect and simultaneous plenitude of an endless life. To use a classic image of theology, God is a Now standing, an “eternal present”⁵. In Him there is no past (memory) no future (expectation), but only the pure and immutable act of his Being.

"Your years are a single day", Augustine says to God, «and your day is not every day, but today; because your today does not give way to tomorrow nor does it follow yesterday. Your today is eternity»⁶. Catholic doctrine has formalized this intuition by defining eternity as one of the divine attributes., one of the elements that make up the “DNA” of God. God is immutable, absolutely perfect and simple. Temporal succession implies change, a step from power to action, which is inconceivable in Him who is Pure Act, as Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches⁷.

So, every attempt to apply to God our temporal categories—categories proper to us, that we are in time — it is destined to fail. He is the Lord of time precisely because he is not its prisoner..

"What is, well, the time?» Once the extraterritoriality of God with respect to time is established, Agustín faces the second, and perhaps more arduous, issue: define the nature of time itself. Here arises the famous paradox that has fascinated generations of thinkers: «So what is the time?? If no one asks me, scio; I would like to explain to the inquirer, I don't know" - "What is, well, the time? If no one asks me, I know; If I want to explain it to the person who asks me, I don't know»⁸. This statement is not a confession of ignorance or agnosticism, but the starting point of a deep spiritual and phenomenological inquiry.

Augustine experiences the reality of time: lives it, measures it, and yet he fails to enclose it in a concept. Thus begins a process of dismantling the common convictions of his century. Is time perhaps the movement of celestial bodies, of the sun, the moon and the stars? No, respond, because even if the heavens stopped, the potter's wheel would keep turning, and we would measure its movement in time. time, therefore, it is not the movement itself, but the measure of movement. But how to measure something so elusive?

The past is no longer, the future is not yet. It would seem that only the present exists. But even the present is problematic. If it had duration, It would be divisible into a before and an after, and would cease to be present. The present, to be, It must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no longer and what is not yet. But how can something without duration constitute the reality of time??

The Augustinian solution It's as cool as it is introspective.. After searching for time in the outside world, in the skies and in the objects, Agustín finds it inside, in the soul of man. Time has no ontological consistency outside of us.; its reality is psychological. It is a distension of the mind, a "distension" or "dilation" of the soul. The human soul has three faculties that correspond to the three dimensions of time: memory (memory), through which the soul makes the past present; the expectation (expectation), by which the soul anticipates and makes present what is not yet; and attention (attention O bruised), by which the soul concentrates on the present moment, the point at which expectation transforms into memory.

When we sing a hymn, Agustín explains with a beautiful example, our soul is "extended". All the singing is present in the expectation before beginning; as the words are spoken, go from expectation to attention, and finally they are deposited in memory. The action takes place in the present, but it is possible thanks to this continuous "distension" of the soul between the future (that is shortened) and the past (that lengthens). time, therefore, It is the measure of this impression that things leave on the soul and that the soul itself produces⁹.

Although Augustinian speculation reaches the highest philosophical and theological level, It is far from being a mere intellectual exercise. Offers, rather, to each of us a key to redeem our own experience of time and live in a more authentic and spiritually fruitful way. From the Augustinian perspective arise, well, three reflections.

Our daily life is dominated by Chronos: quantitative time, sequential, measured by clock. It is the time of efficiency, productivity and anxiety, as we said at the beginning. Augustinian reflection invites us to discover the Cairo: qualitative time, the "opportune moment", the moment loaded with meaning in which eternity intersects with our history. If God is an "eternal present", then every present, every "now", becomes the privileged place of encounter with Him. Augustine's teaching exhorts us to sanctify the present, to live it with attention, with full awareness. Instead of constantly fleeing towards the future of our projects or towards the past of our regrets, We are called to find God in the everyday life of the present moment.: in prayer, at work, in relationships, in the service. It is the invitation to live the spirituality of the "present moment", so loved by many teachers of inner life.

There is a place and a time in which the Cairo breaks into the Chronos supremely: the Sacred Liturgy, and in particular the celebration of the Eucharist. During the Holy Mass, the time of the Church is united to the eternal present of God. The Sacrifice of Christ, fulfilled once and for all in history (ephapax)¹¹, it is not "repeated", but it is "re-presented", becoming sacramentally present at the altar. Past, present and future converge: we remember the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ (past); we celebrate his real presence in our midst (here I'm); and we anticipate the glory of his return and the eternal banquet (future)¹⁰. The Liturgy is the great school that teaches us to live time in a new way: no longer as an inexorable flight towards death, but as a hopeful pilgrimage towards the fullness of life in the eternity of God.

Finally, the conception of time as distension of the mind offers deep consolation. The "distension" of the soul between memory and expectation - which for the man without faith can be a source of anguish (the weight of the past, the uncertainty of the future)— becomes for the Christian the very space of faith, hope and charity. Memory is not just the memory of our failures, but above all the memory of salvation: the memory of the wonders that God has worked in the history of salvation and in our personal lives. It is the foundation of our faith. Expectation is not anxiety about an uncertain future, but the sure hope of the definitive encounter with Christ, the beatific vision promised to the pure in heart. And attention to the present becomes the space of charity, of concrete love for God and neighbor, the only act that "remains" for eternity (1 Color 13,13).

Our life moves like this, like a spiritual breath, between the grateful memory of the grace received and the confident expectation of the promised glory. Thus, the Augustinian man is not crushed by time, but inhabits it like a temporary tent, with the heart already oriented towards the heavenly homeland, where God will be "all in all" and where time will dissolve into the one, eternal and beatifying today of God.

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, a 12 November 2025

Notes

1. M. Heidegger, Being and time, 1927, especially the sections dedicated to the existential analysis of temporality: First section § 27; Second section §§ 46-53; Second section §§ 54-60 y §§ 65-69.
2. A topic so present in contemporary culture that it has even been the subject of theatrical performances in Italy about Augustine and time..
3. Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, XI, 12, 14: "What was God doing?", before he made heaven and earth?»
4. Ibid., XI, 13, 15.
5. Boethius, On the consolation of philosophy, V, 6: "Eternity is the interminable possession of life all at once and perfect".
6. Confessions, XI, 13, 16.
7. Saint Thomas Aquinas, QUESTION, I, q. 9 («On the immutability of God») and what. 10 («On the eternity of God»).
8. Confessions, XI, 14, 17.
9. Confessions, XI, 28, 38.
10. Catechism of the Catholic Church, NN. 1085, 1362-1367.
11. About the term ephapax (one time), see Hebrews 7,27; 9,12; 10,10; Romans 6,10: indicates the unique and definitive character of Christ's sacrifice, "once for all".

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