Word to the Wise
Friday, September 26, 2008 - Friday in the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
[Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 and Luke 9:18-22]There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for everything under the heavens. A time to be born, and a time to die.........
If ever fatalism could be made charming, the passage from Ecclesiastes for the first scripture of this day is certainly a good candidate. This is a great poem to resignation! However, I don't think most who read it do so with that idea in mind! My experience is that many people read it with enjoying or solemnizing (funeral) a present moment and not with the idea that the present moment was ordained from eternity. We Americans are far too future-oriented. To speak of "time" in terms of chronological time - hours, days, years - in the case of God is futile! God is outside time of that kind - the measure of before and after - past and future. To speak of time in terms of what the ancient Greeks called kairos does make sense. This meaning of time is closer to what Ecclesiastes is getting at without the deterministic element. It's closer to what we Americans call "timing" - the right "moment." In this sense, we may recognize the presence of God in the turn of worldly events in a way that is "providential." The last words of the passage today speak of this when they say: He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without man's ever discovering from beginning to end, the work which God has done. This tells us that we do not have to be fatalistic like Ecclesiastes, but simply more observant of God's workings in each event. AMEN
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