Homilies on Ecclesiastes 3

It would be time to search out what the voice of the Ecclesiast will teach us after this. We learned at first what we learned: that the one who assembles the whole creation into a church, who seeks what was lost and gathers into one what had wandered, is the one who visits the earthly life. For what is under heaven is earthly, what the passage calls “under heaven,” in which are deceit and the non-existent. In the second exposition we learned that the accusation against the disposition given to enjoyment and passion was made in the person of Solomon, so that the rejection of such things might be credible to us, since it comes from one who had in his full power whatever leads to pleasure for enjoyment, and who spat on all the things that seem to be eagerly pursued among human beings as worth nothing. What, then, do we learn now in the third place, following the sequence? What I think is the lesson most fitting of all for those who assemble in the church: I mean the confession of the things that have been done against reason, which produces in the soul the passion of shame through the open declaration of what was out of place. For the modesty that lies in human beings seems to be a great and strong weapon for escaping sin, placed in us by God, I think, for this very purpose, so that such a disposition of the soul might become for us an aversion from what is worse. Modesty and the passion of shame are akin and closely related to one another, and through both of them sin is hindered, if one is willing to use such a disposition of the soul for this end. For often modesty more than fear has trained one to avoid what is out of place; but shame too, following on the exposures of a fault, is enough of itself to bring the sinner to his senses so that he does not again fall into the same things. And if one were to write down their difference in a definition, shame is intensified modesty, and modesty, conversely, is relaxed shame. The difference and the kinship of the passions are shown also by the colour of the face. Modesty is marked by blushing alone, the body somehow sharing in the soul’s feeling by a natural disposition, and the warmth about the heart boiling up to the surface of the face; but the one who is ashamed at the disclosure of his fault … becomes … and reddish, fear having mixed pallor with the blush. Such a passion, then, would be enough to keep those who have been caught in something out of place from falling again into the things whose exposure they have made with shame. If, then, these things are so, and the passage has rightly aimed at the passion, since such a disposition is implanted in nature as a guard against faults, it is good to regard as a lesson proper to the church the amendment that comes through the open confession of faults; for through this one can secure one’s own soul with the weapon of shame. For just as, if someone through immoderate gluttony has collected in himself certain humours hard to digest, and then, when the body has become inflamed, is cured of the disease by the knife and cautery, he has, as it were, a tutor against disorder for the rest of his life when he sees the scar of the cautery on his body, so the one who has posted himself up publicly through the confession of hidden things sets the memory of the passion of shame as a tutor for the life that follows. These, then, are the things in which the church is instructed through the present reading of what is written in the Ecclesiast.

For he says this, publishing it with a free voice, and setting up before all human beings, as it were a written pillar, the confession of what he had done — things such that ignorance of them and the silence of speech would be more honourable. He says them; whether he truly did them or is fashioning them for our benefit, so as to carry the argument through to its aim by a consistent sequence, I cannot say precisely. In any case he says these things, which one who looks to virtue would not willingly be carried along with. But whether, for the sake of a saving arrangement, he narrates as having happened things that did not happen, and accuses them as one who has experienced them, so that we may turn away from desire for what has been accused before we experience it; or whether he really let himself down willingly to the enjoyment of such things, so as to train even his senses through their opposites — let it be left to the free choice of whoever wishes to take his conjecture in whichever direction he wants. But if someone says that he really came to be in the experience of pleasures, we understand it thus. Just as those who [dive] to the depth of the water, in case they might find a pearl somewhere or something else of the things born in the deep — for whom the hardship under the water brings no pleasure, but the hope of gain has made them divers — so, if what Solomon says in these passages really happened, he surely gave himself to luxury like one of those who dive for purple in the sea: not so as to be filled with the brine of the sea — I call pleasure brine — but to seek what is useful for the mind in such a deep. What would be found useful through such things, according to my conjecture at least, is either to blunt the impulses of the body by setting before it in full what it wants — for nature always has its movements more contentious toward what is forbidden — or the teacher comes into these things for the sake of credibility, so that the thing despised by one who learned its vanity by experience might no longer be thought desirable by human beings. For they say that physicians too succeed in their art in those matters where they have come to know the form of the illness through their own bodies, and they become safer advisers and healers of those whose knowledge they had through being healed first, inasmuch as they were taught beforehand by their own suffering. Let us see, then, what the one who heals our life says he experienced in his own life.

“[I made great],” he says, “my work; I built houses.” At once the passage begins from an accusation. For he does not speak of the work of God, which I am, but says, “I made great what is mine.” My work is nothing else than what brings pleasure to the senses. This work is one by its general account, but in detailed division it is compelled by the needs of luxury to be split into many. For whoever has once come to be within the matter of the deep must necessarily turn his eye in every direction from which pleasure may possibly appear. For as water is channelled in many directions from one spring through pipes, and what is divided from the spring is no less water, even if it happens to flow in countless jets, so pleasure, being one by nature, flows everywhere, differently and in different ways, by underground channels in the differences of pursuits, introducing itself together with the needs of life. For example, life has made dwelling necessary for nature; for the human being is by nature too weak to bear the extremes of heat and cold. Up to this point the house has its usefulness for life; but pleasure has forced the human being to pass beyond the limits of need. For as though not providing what the body needs, but devising delights and luxuries for the eyes, he is almost grieved that he did not make heaven itself a roof, and cannot fit the very rays of the sun into his ceiling. Therefore he widens on every side the outlines of his buildings, founding the enclosure of his dwelling for himself as though it were another inhabited world. He stretches the walls up to the greatest possible height; he decorates the interiors of the rooms with ornaments. … Thessalian and … stone is opened out, and by iron into slabs …; the metals of the Nile and those of Numidia are sought out, and somewhere too the Phrygian stone [is brought] by the zeal of those [who desire it], whose purple dye … becomes a luxury to greedier eyes, having painted on the white a varied and many-shaped diffusion of colour. How much zeal about these things! How many shapes! How many machines! some sawing through the materials with water and iron, others with human hands, those who work the cutting toiling night and day! And not even these sufficed for those who labour over vain adornment; even the purity of glass is stained with drugs into varied dyes, so that something from it too may be added to the luxury of their conceits. How would one describe the elaborateness of the ceilings, in which the beams made of cedar are turned back again by the devices of art into what are thought to be trees, putting forth branches and leaves and fruits in the carvings? I say nothing of the gold stretched out into thin and airy films and spread everywhere over these, so as to turn the greed of the eyes toward itself. And the importation of ivory for the elaborate adornment of …, or the silver beaten in with nails, and all such things — what would one say? Or the floors of the houses gleaming beneath with the varied dyes of stones, so that even their feet may luxuriate in the gleam of the stones; and the ambition for the multitude of such houses, whose construction the need of life does not make necessary, but desire, advancing through folly, finds what is unseasonable. For some parts of the houses must be running-tracks, others …, some for entrances, others again for gatehouses. For they do not think the gates and porches sufficient for display, nor the spaciousness inside the gates, unless something of this kind meets those who enter first, such as to strike the one who comes in with amazement at once at what he sees. And besides these, baths that go along with ambition in their use, flooded with whole rivers in the abundance of their jets; and gymnasia set before them, and these too excessively fitted out with varied marbles for adornment; and colonnades on every side round the dwelling …, when bronze in the statues is shaped into countless forms, to whatever the desire for elaborateness pours the material; and the images of marble, and the paintings on panels, through which … commit fornication with their eyes, art stripping bare by imitation what should not be seen; and all that one can see in such things to strike amazement and charm … How could one go through each thing in speech, in which the zeal is an accusation and an exposure of carelessness about the things that come first? For the more one increases his zeal for what is built, in number and in ambition for materials, the more it exposes the soul’s lack of adornment. For one who looks to himself and adorns his own real dwelling, so as one day to receive even God as its inhabitant, has other materials from which beauty is gathered for such a dwelling. I know a gold that glitters in such works, the gold mined from the thoughts of Scripture; I know a silver, the divine oracles tried in the fire, whose brilliance flashes, shining out through the truth. And if you understand the gleams of varied stones, with which the walls of such a temple are adorned and the floors of the building, as the varied dispositions of the virtues, you would not miss the adornment that befits the house. Let the floor be paved with self-control, through which the dust of earthly thought will [not] trouble the one who lives there. Let the hope of the heavens beautify the ceiling; looking up to it with the eye of the soul, you will see not images of beauty shaped by carving, but the archetypal beauty itself, not embroidered with gold and silver, but what is above gold and much precious stone. And if we must also sketch in speech an adornment on the sides, let incorruptibility and freedom from passion overlay the house on this side; on that side let righteousness and freedom from anger adorn the dwelling. On another part let humility and long-suffering shine out, and on another again reverence toward the Divine; and let love, the good craftsman, fit all these together harmoniously with one another. And if you desire baths, if you wish you have a bath at home, and your own jets through which one can wash off the stains of the soul — the bath the great David too used, luxuriating in such a bath every night. Do not elaborate Phrygian or porphyry columns to support the colonnade of the soul; but let what is firm and immovable in every good be more precious than these material ornaments. Images of every kind, whether in paintings or in sculptures, all that human beings contrive by deceit for the imitation of truth, such a dwelling does not admit, filled as it is with the statues of truth. If you desire running-tracks and walks, you have the way of life in the commandments. For so Wisdom says: “I walk in the ways of righteousness, and I turn about in the midst of the paths of judgment.” How good it is for the soul to move and exercise itself in these, and, having passed by its motion through the place of the commandment, to turn back again to the same; that is, having fulfilled the commandment of the things it strives for, again to the second and third … Let the amendment of character and the decorum of life adorn it. One who trains his own building to beauty in this way will care little for earthly matter, will not trouble himself with mines, will not cross the Indian seas so that the bones of elephants may be attached to the material by art; but he has at home the wealth that supplies such constructions.

… For to the better-disposed among the sons the [father’s] unseemliness was thought worthy of pity, but to the reckless and undisciplined one it was an occasion for laughter … of drunkenness … the confession of the planting of vineyards. For the passage includes in its force all the passions that wine produces, how many and of what kind they are. For who of all people does not know that wine, when through immoderation it goes beyond need, is a kindling of licentiousness, a supply of pleasures, a ruin of youth, a disgrace of old age, a dishonour of women, a drug of madness, a provision for drunken violence, a poison of the soul, a deadening of the mind, an estrangement from virtue? From it comes laughter without excuse, lamentation without cause, spontaneous tears, groundless boasting, shamelessness in lying, desire for the non-existent, hope for the impossible, overweening threat, irrational fear, insensibility to what is truly fearful, causeless suspicion, unreasonable friendliness, promising of the impossible; to pass over the other things — the unseemly nodding, the drooping heavy-headedness, the disgrace that comes from immoderate repletion, the loosening of the joints, the bending of the neck, which no longer holds itself up on the shoulders, since the moisture from the wine loosens the binding of the neck. What brought about the lawless abomination of intercourse with daughters? What stole away Lot’s mind from what was happening, so that he both dared the abomination and did not know what he had dared? Who, as in a riddle, coined the strange naming of those children? How did the mothers of that accursed birth become sisters of their own children? How did the children have the same man as father and grandfather together? Who confounded nature in lawlessness? Was it not wine, going beyond its measures, that brought in this unbelievable tragedy? Did not drunkenness weave such a tale into the history, one that by its excesses surpasses even real tales? “For they made their father drink wine,” it says; and thus, his mind having been driven out by the wine, as if held by some enchantment he left this tragic narrative to life, his perception having been stolen from him by drunkenness at the time of the abomination. Those women who carried the wine out with them — O evil from an evil mixing bowl for the father! How much better it would have been for that wine too to have perished in Sodom with everything, before becoming the supplier of such a tragedy! And though there are such examples, and so many evils from wine in life every day, the one who shamelessly posts up his own deeds through confession says that he did this too: that he not only used wine that existed, but [took care] how the [supply] of such a thing might increase. “For I planted for myself,” he says, “vineyards.” I would not need [vineyards], if I myself had become a flourishing vine, a spiritual vine, luxuriant and spreading, entwined with what is akin to it by the branches of life and the tendrils of love, and in leaf, instead of leaves, with the decorum of its ways, and nourishing the sweet and ripe cluster of virtue. One who plants these in his own soul and cultivates the wine that gladdens the heart, and works his own land according to the proverb, as the law of such cultivation requires — calling, as it were, his life to account by his reasonings, plucking out the bastard growths that spring up beside the roots of the virtues, watering the soul with lessons, and pruning with the sickle of the discerning word the mind’s inclination toward what is superfluous and profitless — such a one would be most blessed in his farming, pressing out his own cluster into the mixing bowl of wisdom. But he who speaks of the earth and embraces its things does not know such planting. For he adds to these the [gardens] and parks of wealth … What need of many parks for one who looks to the one paradise? What benefit to me from a garden that grows vegetables, the food of the sick? [If I had been in] the paradise, I would not have been poured out into the desire for many parks. If I had kept my soul in health, so as to be able to share in the more solid food, [I would] not [have sought] the food suited to weakness. But since luxury has once come in together with need, and desire has passed its limits, after the extravagance in houses and the expense on vain things under a roof, he then cultivates luxury in the open air as well, and uses even the nature of the air for the desire of pleasures. For trees are cultivated for him by farming, evergreen and dense, becoming a ceiling of air, so that even in the open he may luxuriate as in a house; and the surface of the earth is clothed with every kind of plant by the gardeners’ art, so that pleasant things from every side may meet the eye wherever it turns its gaze, and he may always be among the things he desires, and see in each season of the year what is beyond the season: grass in winter, and flowers before their time, and the vine trained up trees, entwining its own branches with others’, and the graceful windings of ivy about the trees, and all the kinds of fruit, which, mixed with one another from different kinds, do violence to nature, so as to seem in form and taste whatever arises from the blending of different stocks. All these, and anything else that art has found in plants by doing violence to nature — things which the need of life did not seek, but undisciplined desire seeks — these, says the one who confesses his own deeds, came about in his love of art in gardens and parks. For by saying, “I planted every fruit tree,” he indicated by this comprehensive phrase that he left out nothing of such things. Then, after the luxury in the open and under a roof, not even water is left without its contribution to the supply of pleasures, as though one must luxuriate in all the elements: in earth through what belongs to it, in air through the trees, in water through a hand-made sea. For so that the sight of water too may sweeten the deceit of the eyes, the ground becomes a lake, the water being enclosed by buildings all round, so that swimming may bring pleasure to those … bodies, and the outflow, divided everywhere for the needs of what is watered, may furnish parks. “For I made for myself,” he says, “pools of water, to water from them a forest sprouting trees.” But for me there was the spring of paradise, that is, the teaching of the virtues, by which the drought of the soul was bedewed, having looked beyond earthly waters, whose enjoyment is temporary and whose nature is passing. It would be better, then, to channel for ourselves a small outflow from the divine spring, by which the virtues of the soul spring up and are watered, so that the grove of good … may flourish in our souls, through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of ages. Amen.