Thursday in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, September 24, 2020

Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity! What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays. The sun rises and the sun goes down; then it presses on to the place where it rises. Blowing now toward the south, then toward the north, the wind turns again and again, resuming its rounds. All rivers go to the sea, yet never does the sea become full. To the place where they go, the rivers keep on going. All speech is labored; there is nothing one can say. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear satisfied with hearing.  What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun. Even the thing of which we say, “See, this is new!” has already existed in the ages that preceded us. There is no remembrance of the men of old; nor of those to come will there be any remembrance among those who come after them.

The Book of Ecclesiastes appears, at first reading, rather pessimistic.  All things are vanity!  Even the brief shrug of optimism towards the end, “Go then, and eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with gladness, because your works please God” (Ecclesiastes 9, 7) is surrounded by grim reminders that death is just around the corner, awaiting its chance.  This book does contain beautiful, memorable lines, but on the whole we might wonder what it is doing in the Bible.  It hardly mentions God, for one thing.  It has much value for the Christian, however, because it helps him to understand the depths of the human dilemma before the coming of the Lord Jesus: Human nature is fallen and without grace we can do nothing to help ourselves, and when we die, we will suffer punishment in hell for our sins.  The author of Ecclesiastes did not speak of hell as it had not yet been revealed, but speaks of death in what would be its place.  We are mortally wounded, and yet we cannot help ourselves: all we can do is to prolong our time of suffering, and to enjoy a few moments if a pause in it occurs.  We ought to consider that this is the modern view of life as well, that we are all doomed to extinction and that we should enjoy what we can while we can.  This view incites hedonism, waste, addiction, and violence.  The only way out of this doom is through Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life, and the Light in the darkness.

“All things are vanity!”  The Hebrew word translated as “vanity” has the primary meaning of “breath” or “vapor”: All things dissipate quickly like a breath or a bit of mist.  The Greek word used for the Hebrew in the Septuagint has the meaning of “emptiness”, “instability”, or “meaninglessness”.  The English word “vanity”, used in most translations, formerly had as its primary meaning “worthlessness” or “emptiness”, as in, All our attempts were in vain.  The author of Ecclesiastes, traditionally thought to be King Solomon, declares at the very head of his book that “all things” are vapor, are worthless.  Nothing is excluded.  “What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun?”  That is, a man is born, works, and then dies.  What does he gain for all this?  It is the question God asks the rich farmer at the end of his life in the parable Jesus tells: “You fool, this night do they require your soul of you. And whose shall those things be which you have provided?” (Luke 12, 20).  

“One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays.”  Since the days when Charles Darwin wrote about the evolution of species and the tendency he thought he observed in simple species to evolve into more complex, hardier ones, people have had a fascination for the notion of human progress, in terms of the improvement of human living conditions, development of morality, and even political and economic evolution.  The author of Ecclesiastes would dispute that this kind of “betterment” can be achieved or that it is inevitable, as its proponents believe.  The simple fact is that while we have had much change in certain areas of life, we have had no intrinsic progress.  Human nature in its fallen state remains the same throughout the ages. 

“All speech is labored; there is nothing one can say. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear satisfied with hearing.”  Here, Qoheleth speaks of our frustration with our human limitations.  This verse might remind us of Augustine saying, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.”  Our restless hearts, made to seek and to find God, are so often frustrated by our evil habits, fleeting desires, and sloth and so they seek shortcuts to peace in dangerous, unfulfilling ways.  This is the way to emptiness.

“Nothing is new under the sun.”  This saying shows us the way to the solution of the human dilemma.  For thousands of years, the human race yearned for a deliverance that could come only from “the outside” of our world, that is, from divine intervention.  The deliverance arrived when God became man and died for our sins.  The Incarnation  was the something “new” under the sun that humanity did not dare to dream of.  Jesus Christ makes a new covenant between us and God; pours the new wine of grace into the new wineskins of those transformed by faith; and promises those reborn in him a place in the New Jerusalem.  We can see why St. Paul urges the Gentile converts of Colossae: “As therefore you have received Jesus Christ the Lord, walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him and confirmed in the faith, as also you have learned: abounding in him in thanksgiving” (Colossians 2, 6-7).