Saturday in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, September 24, 2022

Ecclesiastes 11, 9—12; 8

Rejoice, O young man, while you are young and let your heart be glad in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart, the vision of your eyes; Yet understand that as regards all this God will bring you to judgment. Ward off grief from your heart and put away trouble from your presence, though the dawn of youth is fleeting. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come And the years approach of which you will say, I have no pleasure in them; Before the sun is darkened, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, while the clouds return after the rain; When the guardians of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, And the grinders are idle because they are few, and they who look through the windows grow blind; When the doors to the street are shut, and the sound of the mill is low; When one waits for the chirp of a bird, but all the daughters of song are suppressed; And one fears heights, and perils in the street; When the almond tree blooms, and the locust grows sluggish and the caper berry is without effect, Because man goes to his lasting home, and mourners go about the streets; Before the silver cord is snapped and the golden bowl is broken, And the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the broken pulley falls into the well, And the dust returns to the earth as it once was, and the life breath returns to God who gave it.  Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, all things are vanity!

Qoheleth concludes the Book of Ecclesiastes by exhorting the young not to despair in light of the apparent purposeless of human life.  Throughout the book he taught that God has provided structure and order in the world he  created.  He also cautions against tricking ourselves into believing that we can learn how to predict actions and events from our observances and study of this structure and order — through astrology, auspices, and other attempts to attach meaning to physical reality that exists independently of us.  This frees us to live in accord with the world as it is, which ultimately leads us on to salvation.  And so Qoheleth says, “Rejoice, O young man, while you are young and let your heart be glad in the days of your youth.  Follow the ways of your heart, the vision of your eyes.”  At the same time, “Yet understand that as regards all this God will bring you to judgment.”  At the time this book was written, belief in a final judgment had begun to spread through Judaism and is alluded to in the later Prophets and in apocryphal religious works written  at this time.  The author here, speaking to believing and practicing Jews, tells them to enjoy life, but to do so with the judgment in mind.  This is a teaching we can take to heart even more than the original readers because the Son of God himself has come down to instruct us about heaven and even to die for us so that we can go there ourselves.  We can “ward off grief from [our] heart and put away trouble from [our] presence, though the dawn of youth is fleeting” with complete confidence that the Lord will lead us to heaven, provided we follow him there.  We can choose whether to follow him or to give ourselves over to the “vanities” of this world.