‘Who, if not us? When, if not now?’ (Saint Joan of Arc).
These words were spoken by Saint Joan of Arc, and were probably addressed to the army entrusted to her by King Charles VII to fulfil God’s command to liberate France from English occupation.
These questions allude to the ‘kairos’. Unlike the Greek word ‘chronos’, which designates the cyclical passage of time, the term ‘kairos’ refers to the ‘now’. This “now” of which Saint Joan speaks is the ‘now’ of God, which demands that we cooperate with His grace.
“At the acceptable time I have listened to you, and helped you on the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2) – the Scriptures testify. We live in God’s ‘now’, in which He offers His grace to all humanity through His Son.
Saint Jeanne knew that she had only a short time to carry out her mission, a specific time that God had given her to accomplish what He had entrusted to her. That is why she urged her soldiers to act: ‘Who, if not us? When, if not now?’ She knew that it was the Lord’s hour and also hers.
In our lives, too, the Father may address us and urge us to act when our ‘now’ has come. Then we can no longer hesitate or back down, because it is the time to act that we may have been waiting for for a long time and for which we have been preparing.
Perhaps there is no one else in the world who can fulfil the specific mission that the Lord has entrusted to us or walk the path that God has laid out for us. Then today’s phrase can apply to us in the singular: ‘Who, if not me? When, if not now?’