The word “today” is used numerous times by Christ in the Gospel to emphasize the imperative of the Lord’s work, actions and their consequences. Whether it is within His parables, or in the proclamation of His victory the use of the word “today” expresses a profound mystical reality, that at any particular moment in time (as experienced in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months or years) there is an encounter with the timeless and eternal presence of God. Yet there is a temptation that we can easily fall into that sees “today” as just a kind of spiritual time stamp that marks moments in history.
The problem with this understanding of “today” is that it conforms the work of the creator, to His creation (we see this over and over again anytime we get close to Christmas or Easter with silly articles that try to prove or disprove that Jesus existed). Its consequences reduce the scriptural witness to a bunch of moral stories that have to be proved or disproved, or even worse, it presents our faith as a dead letter as being impractical or disconnected from a created reality.
This all stands in stark contrast to the witness of Orthodoxy (and traditional sacramental Christianity) – that sees the imperative of this divine “today” as something that surpasses the history (and time) in its witness of God acting to save humanity. We see this beautifully presented and proclaimed in the feastal proclamation for the Annunciation of Gabriel to the Theotokos; “Today is the beginning of our Salvation.” (Troparion of the Annunciation)
It is in this feast that Gabriel brings the “good news” to Mary that she will bear the “Son of the Most High” who will “reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Lk. 1:32,33). Indeed we witness THE moment in time and history – this “today” – that the eternal God, enters into humanity by assuming it in every way (yet without sin).
Its effect is a cosmic one, that changes everything. For with this feast, our mortal humanity is able to enter into the eternal moment of what is mystically celebrated; a divine and everlasting “today” – that has no past present or future. The timeless and eternal Lord of Glory’s seeks to encounter us for the very purpose, that the finite and created, might encounter the eternal and uncreated; and more than that, become partakers of that “divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). The challenge for us, is to see that the Annunciation’s “today”, and event that happened some 2000 years ago, is the same “today”, that the Lord reveals in His earthly ministry, and the same today as Saints encountered in their confession of faith, and the same today that each of us encounters at every moment.
If we have the eye of faith to accept and understand this all, His proclamation that “today”, the scriptures are fulfilled, is the healing of our broken hearts, and bodies now as then, at the beginning of His Galilean Ministry (Lk. 4:21). That in receiving the Lord “today”, salvation comes to our homes now as then, as it did for the repentant Zachaeus (Lk. 19:9). That having died in the waters of baptism and being raised with Him in newness of life, by the grace of the Holy Spirit “today”, we can be with the Lord in paradise now as then with the wise thief on the Cross (Lk. 23:43),
On the blessed and wondrous feast, there is no truer statement than this “today” as it is in every way “ the beginning of our Salvation.” For the Lord has been working, is working and will always be working to save humanity – to save you and me – regardless of whatever year, month, day or time it might be. By God’s grace, may our hearts embrace every moment, day, week, month, year, as that eternal “today” now, as then on that blessed and holy moment in time, when the Lord of Glory becomes incarnate for our salvation; and reveals in time, His everlasting and eternal love – “today”.