Warten auf ein Fest

(Awaiting a Festival)

Abstract

On the basis of the definition of human beings as beings who await and thus gain time, the essay examines the aporias of the wait within the Christian tradition, namely: the attempt at distinguishing the wait for a forthcoming event and the wait tout court, the re-interpretation of Jesus’ promise to come soon in the sense of an encounter with him after death, the intertwining of millenarism and disappointment, up to the paradoxical re-reading of the wait in Waiting for Godot.