“Be holy”, then, means “be different”, be capable of avoiding the daily idolatrous seduction, that what impeded seeing beyond, be capable of being “other”, of hearing what cannot be recounted, of believing what cannot be spelled out. Consequently, “to sanctify time” means living differently, living that time according to the intention willed by God; above all, it means affirming that not only is there a day that stands at the end of time, but that the end, the goal of time is this: to live in communion with God. Time, therefore, has a precise meaning, because the seventh day is man’s destiny and the destiny of all creation: eschatological anticipation for all humanity, the seventh day is liturgy of all history, transfiguration of the entire cosmos. In God’s intention the believer’s time is a time of rhythms, a time that is different and holy: marked every week by a holy day, the Sabbath, by a holy year every week of years, the sabbatical year, by a holy year every seven weeks of years, the jubilee.
In this way God wanted to impede relegating holiness, mean’s being “other”, to an inaccessible, mythical space. This is the profound meaning of Christian feasts and, around them, of the simple flow of the liturgical year: from Advent, which transforms the memory of the Lord’s coming in the flesh into an invocation of his return in glory, to Christmastide, in which this presence of God among men becomes “epiphany”, a manifestation that culminates in the Trinitarian movement over the rivers of the river Jordan; from the forty days of Lent, in which Christians are invited to be converted to their Lord, returning to him in the simple gestures of every day, such as eating, speaking, struggling, sharing…, up to Passion week, which leads into the vigil that is the mother of all vigils, the holy Night of the Resurrection; from the forty days that follow, which lead to the Ascension, up to the fulfillment of Easter in the effusion of the Spirit on the morning of Pentecost and to the following celebration of the communion of Trinitarian love.