In reading Hegel's Sense Certainty I was struck by his ideas concerning the now. This topic is interesting in the sense that in recent years it seems to have become popular to speak about being present and living in the now. While I don't necessarily disagree with this general sentiment, it does appear to have one essential flaw--the now is always escaping. To quote Hegel, "'Now'; it has already ceased to be in the act of pointing to it" (63). At the same time that the now is that which negates everything, it is also the inescapable situation in which all things exist.
I very much appreciated Hegel's connection of this concept to the Eucharist on page 65 when he writes, "For he who is initiated into these Mysteries not only comes to doubt the being of sensuous thing, but to despair of it; in part he brings about the nothingness of such things himself in his dealings with them and in part he sees them reduce themselves to nothingness." In the case of the sacrament here, the finite nature of consuming consecrated bread and wine invokes the infinite. Partaking in the seeming destruction of what is eternal points to the eternal thing itself, that is, the universal.
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