…it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. (Romans 13:11-12)
Sleep. It is a strange thing we do for more or less one-third of every day of our lives. It involves the suspension of voluntary bodily functions and of consciousness. It also is a vital necessity; without this resting, we die.
Sleep also has metaphorical meanings. When we’re careless or not alert we seem to be allowing our vigilance or attentiveness to lie dormant. We also use the word to describe lying in death.
In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul is sort of switching meanings of the word. He consider the living of our present lives as being asleep (night) and death as an awakening to the fulness of life (day).
Further, still using this metaphor, he urges us to truly wake up—to cast off the lingering remnants of our night’s dreams and get dressed with the armor of light, ready to live the new, great day.
It’s beautiful imagery. But, it’s not merely imagery, it’s the confidence, in faith, of our real destiny, of God’s ultimate plan for our lives.
St. Paul is not giving a technical, scientific explanation of a kind of metamorphosis. But he is asserting what he believes to be a certain fact.
It’s a familiar process, in a way. We know many things for certain, even if we have hardly any idea at all of how to explain them. We trust the knowledge, integrity, and truthfulness of others all the time.
Some would relegate faith to the category of wishful thinking, imagination, or impossible dreams, but it, too, relies on the knowledge, integrity, and veracity of others.
When St. Paul says, “the night is advanced; the day is at hand,” he’s talking about the end of our present, limited stage of life and about our future one, when we wake up to the fulness of life God has in store for us.
Look, if you know you’re leaving very early tomorrow morning for a wonderful vacation, you’ll certainly try to have your bags packed today before you go to sleep and the clothes you’re going to wear tomorrow selected and ready.
Shouldn’t we do the same when we remember that “our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed”?
Why is it that we are so illogical about the awaking from the sleep that St. Paul is talking about? Any day could be our last day before we die—that is, any day could be the last day we are asleep until we awaken to the wonder of what God has in store for us.
So, so to speak, always have your plans made, your bags packed, your travel documents in order, and everything in readiness for a great departure as soon as you wake up!
If all you worry about and plan for are details of things you want or feel you need to do tomorrow that you couldn’t complete today, you’re actually just rolling over and asking to be left alone to sleep some more—and missing out on all that could have been, if only you had remembered what the really new day was offering.
We know not the day nor the hour, but the end of the night (of our present lives) always may be sooner than we expect or have planned for. That’s why our best course of action is to do the best we can every day of our lives, and treat every day of our lives as though it were the last.
9 January 2022