Transitory

nurture.

Cue the Oxford English Dictionary. The first definition of “transitory” might seem to match the word’s current popular usage: “Not lasting; temporary; brief, fleeting.” But the editors of the OED, before proceeding further, append a telling note: “In early use, often in Christian contexts, contrasting life in this world with the (eternal) afterlife.”

Consider this beautiful passage from the 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer used by several Protestant denominations:

“And we most humbly beseech thee, of thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and succour all those who, in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity.”

This careful phrasing, tragically dumbed down in later editions, uses the word “transitory” in a narrow sense.

The point of the prayer isn’t simply that the life we live is temporary; the point, rather, is that this life is relatively unimportant, our passage through it immeasurably brief when measured against eternity.

One finds a similar notion in the sermon preached in 1865 by Phineas Gurley, chaplain of the Senate, at the funeral of Abraham Lincoln:

“Lord, so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Wean us from this transitory world. Turn away our eyes from beholding vanity.”

Again, the point of “transitory” is to emphasize not merely the evanescence but the unimportance of our present existence. It prompts us to turn our thoughts toward what truly matters, because we ourselves are in motion, in transit from one world to the next. We’re living in a way-station.

Preachers eventually applied this trope to far more than the mystery of death, using the word to remind audiences of the fugitive quality of what seems at a given instant of such fundamental importance. “The student is transitory at the college,” wrote a Pennsylvania pastor in 1906. “Soon he is gone and the institution remains.” But time also works its magic on the institution itself: “As the centuries come and go, the college itself becomes transitory and passes away.”

Thus we see the secular meaning of this traditional usage: Do not be so concerned about the troubles of the moment, the word advises us; they are unenduring. The deeper significance is that which worries us at any given instant is unimportant in the grand scheme.

If this is what economists, central bankers and elected officials have in mind when they call inflation “transitory,” they should say outright that they think the public is upset about nothing. (And take the heat for saying so.)

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.