NEWS

2023 New Year Chapel Hour

Update: January 17, 2023

The 2023 New Year Chapel Hour was held at the university chapel on Wednesday, January 12, 2023.

This year, as a measure to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, the seating was kept at a comfortable distance and a live webcast was provided via Zoom Webinar.

The service was conducted by Rev. Shoko Kitanaka, and all the attendees listened to the organ performance of Hymn "Lift up Your Hearts ! " and the Scripture Reading of 2 Corinthians 1: 4-5.

Following the Scripture Reading, President Shoichiro Iwakiri delivered his message.

Full text of President Iwakiri's message is below.

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The Year of 2023 has just started. Did you all start this year quietly and peacefully? Some of you might not have had the time to do so. The calendar date comes for all of us in the same way. However, what will happen is different for each person.  In the annual calendar of ICU, there is a faculty meeting schedule, and at the beginning of each meeting, new faculty members will do a mini presentation about their research. Last year in December, I would say "last year" but it was just two weeks ago, it was professor Yakiyama, faculty of Philosophy and Religion, who presented her work. In her speech, she mentioned two concepts about time, one was linear time, characterized by eschatology, and the other was cyclical time, which seems to revolve around in a circle. It was a very inspiring speech to celebrate Christmas and the New Year.

Let's put in these two concepts of time the plum trees planted in front of our main building. This winter, the white plum flowers started blooming in the middle of December. Every year, as the seasons change, they blossom and release their lovely fragrance, sprouts out, bears fruit, and then the leaves fall. From a cosmic perspective, this tree is on the earth, which rotates around the sun while spinning around its own axis, but in our daily life, it can be seen that the tree stands in the same place. And each year, it maintains its identity in the cycle of the seasons. However, this plum tree was once a seed or a seedling, and it gradually grew up, and after some decades, it will die ― we cannot know whether the end will come to it naturally or by human hands ― the time will never be repeated, and the cyclical years go and unite in the linear time from birth to death. To that time, humans give a calendar, setting a common objective time for everyone. Months and days of the week are cyclical, years are linear. It can also be called Chrono time, objective, or physical time. At the same time, we have a more subjective and internal sense of time. It is a feeling close to encountering an unexpected event or very deep sensation, different from ordinary time, or rather than being different, it is like a feeling of  endless moment when the concept of time seems to have disappeared. This is sometimes called "Kairos time" which is opposed to Chronos time. The Kairos time is an unexpected event that suddenly happens in the middle of the objective progression, and normal continuity being severed, in a sense, the Kairos time has the power to transport us to another dimension from our ordinary consciousness.

At the beginning of the year, I would like to share one thought with all of you.

We celebrated the birth of Jesus two weeks ago as Christmas, and that event happened only once in history, and it is also the Kairos event. We remember it, recall it repeatedly, and commemorate it. 

In our own life, each of us has our own experience of the special moment : some of us remember it just like an anniversary, others do it without an exact identification of  the date, but in both cases we remember the contents of the event very clearly. 

In 2023, unexpected events, good or bad, may occur in the world, and also in individual lives under various situations. As examples of public calamity, the French writer Proust gives "plague, war, and revolution". Whatever happens, when we look at ourselves, let's not forget that we are able to find the place which is connected to a Kairos time of the full-filled power of goodness overflowing in our hearts. I hope that all of us will be welcomed into the infinite and eternal thing which is already opened there and at the same time, we will be able to welcome it into ourselves. This hope is the reason why I chose a passage from Corinthians to be read today. We need to think about what God is saying to us through Jesus Christ's birth to death, and from time and eternity leading to resurrection, about the meaning and location of suffering, and about the hope that brings comfort to it. I hope we can understand these things more deeply and become engaged through our deeds,