A Journal Entry After Reading Book XI of Confessions
"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." — St. Augustine
Augustine doesn't simply ask what time is—he opens the door to wonder. In Book XI, he turns from his confessional journey and asks: What does it mean to say, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”? What was there before that beginning? Was God doing something? Was He silent?
He rebukes the sharp-tongued answer—"God was preparing hell for those who ask such questions"—not because it’s irreverent, but because it’s impatient. For Augustine, every question that arises from awe should be met with reverence. So he sits with the mystery.
And he says: God did not create in time; He created with time. Time is part of creation itself. God is outside of it—not bound to before or after, past or future. For God, all things are present. That which is yet to come and that which has passed—He sees them as one eternal now.
But we humans—oh, how we struggle. We measure time with clocks, the sun, the ticking of atoms, or the tremble of our own hearts. But time isn't only measured in motion. Augustine says we measure time in the soul: past as memory, present as attention, future as expectation.
I resonate with his wondering. Time slips through our fingers even as we try to hold it down. A good day can vanish in a blink. A moment of suffering can feel eternal. Does time move, or do we move through it?
Sometimes I wish I had someone beside me to pause over every paragraph, to sit in the wonder together. But even in solitude, I wrestle. And in that wrestling, I think:
Time may be a created shadow of eternity—a holy echo. Perhaps it exists not to trap us, but to teach us: that we were made for something more than seconds. We were made for the forever-present.
"You are my eternity, but I am divided in time." — Augustine
So, I wait in this time, with my heart stretched across memory and hope. And I trust that while time may pass, grace does not.
This reflection is not a system, but a longing. Not an answer, but a window. Not a timeline, but a turning toward the Timeless One.
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