St. Paul had a great and broad vision; he saw God’s plan from its beginning to its fulfillment. In one of his resounding sentences he wrote:But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law. In the same vein, Paul assures us that Christ died at the appointed time. What do we mean by appointed time? . . .Only the Lord of history, who sees all of history at once, could fix the appointed time. This truth of our faith should be deeply consoling. We are not adrift on a boundless sea of yesterdays and tomorrows; God has fitted us into his great plan . . . If Christ is the beginning and the end, then he embraces us and our lives, and our short days are taken up into his endless time.

– Father Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J.