Word to the Wise
Friday, September 27, 2024 - Friday in the 25th Week in Ordinary Time
[Eccl/Qoh 3:1-11 and Luke 9:18-22]There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every thing under the heavens. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant......a time to be silent, and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace....He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their heart, without man's ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done. [Ecclesiastes]
SEPTEMBER 27 ST. VINCENT DE PAUL cm
This passage from Ecclesiastes is certainly one of the best known from the Old Testament. It was popularized to some extent by a song composed by Pete Seeger and recorded by a group called THE BYRDS in 1965: TURN, TURN, TURN! The passage has a strange appeal similar to another song, QUE SERA, SERA (What will be, will be!) sung by Doris Day in the Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Man Who knew Too Much,in 1955! Does the Old Testament and the songs invite us to a total passivity? Are we born to sit and wait, like the characters in the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett?
The biblical notion of "time" is not the chronological time that we Westerners are obsessed with. In the Bible, "time" is something that belongs to God and not to astronomical calculation and clocks. All time is today in the sight of God. In the Gospel According to John, Jesus tells his mother at the wedding feast at Cana that "My hour has not yet come." [John 2:4] She didn't look at a clock!
The measurement of time is a convenience created by humans. The ancient Greeks had two different words for time: chronos and kairos. The first of those is measured "time," the second is closer to biblical "time." It means a kind of "situational" time of the sort we refer to when we say, "Time of life..." or "It's high time such and such was done..." Ecclesiastes tells us to put aside our clocks, as if we can control God and all destiny. We do what we have to to survive and take care of the creation that God has placed us in. As hard as it is for many to accept, we are not in charge. We are stewards of our world and not the owners of the vineyard. If nothing else, Ecclesiastes can make us stop and think awhile before looking at our watches. AMEN