Homilies on Ecclesiastes 6

“For all things there is a time, and a season for every matter under heaven”: this is the beginning of the oracles set before us for contemplation. The labour too is …, and the gain from the labour is worth the labour. For perhaps the aim of what we contemplated in the first parts of the book is made manifest above all in this part, as the discourse, proceeding, will show through the sequence. In the preceding discourses all things were condemned as vain that are pursued among human beings for no gain to the soul. For the good was pointed out, toward which one must look through the thoughts set in the head; and for those [who have] wisdom … luxury. It remains to learn how one may live according to virtue, receiving through the discourse, as it were, an art and method for setting life right. These, then, are the things which the present examination of the words promises us in its prologue, in which it declares that “for all things there is a time, and a season for every matter under heaven.” For if anyone [looks] into the depth of [the sense] … enclosed in the words, both contemplative and giving counsel about what is beneficial. And so that we may have a brief approach to the contemplation of the saying, we shall take up the discourse thus. Of existing things, one kind is material and perceptible by sense, the other intelligible and immaterial. Of these the incorporeal lies above sense-apprehension; we shall know it then, when we put off the senses. But sense-perception, which grasps the material nature, has no nature to pass beyond the heavenly body and penetrate to what lies beyond the things that appear. For this reason the discourse speaks to us about earthly and heavenly things, so that we may pass through this life without stumbling. This life is material, our living through flesh; and the contemplation of the beautiful is somehow darkened by what appears to the senses. We need, then, some knowledge for the judgment of the beautiful, so that, as with constructions, a rule or plumb line may straighten everything that is made. This, then, is shown us beforehand by the discourse, by which life is straightened toward what it ought to be. For he says that there are two criteria of the beautiful in life, in each of the things pursued in this life: due measure and right timing. And he lays this down as doctrine now, saying, “For all things there is a time, and a season for every matter.” “Time” must be understood as standing for measure, because time extends alongside everything that comes to be. Whether, then, these criteria of the beautiful are suited universally for every achievement of virtue, I do not yet assert, until the discourse, proceeding, shows it. But that the greater part of an ordered life is set right by such observance, anyone could perceive. For who does not know that virtue too is a measure, measured by the mean of the things considered beside it? For what falls short of the due measure, or exceeds it, could not be virtue; as with courage, whose deficiency is cowardice and whose excess becomes rashness. For this reason some of the outside wisdom, perhaps having become thieves of what is ours, divided between them the sense signified in this saying: one [laid down] that nothing should fall short, …; for one declared that measure is best, and the other legislated “nothing too much.” And it is shown by both that failing to reach the measure sought in virtue is among the things condemned, and that [going beyond] due proportion is to be rejected. But the same account will be given us also about the part concerning right timing: that neither what anticipates the right moment nor what lags behind it is judged to belong to the lot of the good. What did it profit the farmer who [undertook] the cutting of the ears before the crops had ripened in their season, or who put off his effort at the harvest until the seeds had flowed off the stalk? For in neither case does the effort become effective for good, since in the untimeliness of the cutting he loses the benefit, on either side, of the right moment. What has been said in a part can be perceived in everything too. For seafaring too knows the same, whether one speaks of the right moment …; or if one speaks of medicine, how much harm comes from excess and deficiency of the time and measure proper to treatment? But these things must be left, since in what follows the … becomes clearer in the very words of the Ecclesiast.

But for what reason have we contemplated these things beforehand? Because neither the measureless is good nor the untimely; but that is beautiful and to be chosen which has its perfection through both. For if only the one is in it, [and] what is lacking [is neglected] in the effort, even what has been achieved will be profitless because of what is lacking. So, just as when we make our motion with two feet, if something happens to one, even the unhurt one is useless for running because of the weakness of its partner, so if measure is lacking to timing, or timing to measure, what is present too has surely been made useless by what is lacking. But proportion within timing, and timing within measure, have usefulness. “Time,” then, has been understood by us as standing for measure, because time is the measure of every measure of each thing. For the things that come to be surely come to be in time, and the extent of time stretches together with the extension of each thing that comes to be: little time in the lesser, and more in the greater. A measure of pregnancy, a measure of the growth of the ears, a measure of the ripening of fruits, a measure of a voyage, a measure of a journey, a measure of each age: of the infant, the little child, the stripling, the boy, the youth, the man, the middle-aged, the mature, the one past his prime, the elder, the old man. Since, then, the measure that comes from time is not one for all — for it is not possible for all things to be equal in measure to one another because of the difference of the subjects — but time, as has been said, is the common measure of all that is measured, containing all things in itself, for this reason he did not say “a measure for all,” because there is much inequality of more and less among the things measured, but he said “a time for all,” the generic measure by which everything that comes to be is measured. For just as in humanity one part is [already] weakening, another is not yet settled, and the best is the mean of the two, which escapes the unpleasant features of both — in which is shown strength separated from the disorder of youth, and prudence separated from the feebleness of old age, so that there is strength blended with prudence, equally avoiding both the feebleness of old age and the rashness of youth — so the one who assigns “a time to all” separates by his discourse the vice that comes from measurelessness on each side, both the excessive and the deficient … But it would be time, following the sequence, to add the contemplation of the God-inspired words themselves.

“A season,” he says, “to give birth, and a season to die.” Well has he yoked together in his discourse at the very first this necessary pair, joining death to birth. For death follows of necessity upon childbirth, and every coming-to-be is dissolved into corruption; so that by showing death and birth joined together he may rouse, as with a goad, by the memory of death, those who are sunk deep in the life according to the flesh, and stir them to care for the things to come. This Moses too, the friend of God, teaches, as has been said, in the first titles of his books, setting Exodus at once beside Genesis, so that those who read the titles may be instructed in what concerns themselves by the very order of the books. For one cannot hear “genesis” without at once thinking of “exodus.” The great Ecclesiast, having understood this here too, shows it, by setting death as the counterpart of birth. “For there is a season,” he says, “to give birth, and a season to die.” The season came, he says, and I was born; the season will come, and I shall die. If we all looked to this, we would not abandon the short road and go round in a circle with the ungodly, wandering the circuitous wandering of life, in powers and … and riches; through which, entangled in the many roads of this life, we no longer find the exit from this life, confounding for ourselves, through the very things we seem to pursue, the signs of the road that does not wander. How blessed, he says, are those among human beings who, leaving the circuitous deceits of life, lead themselves to the short road of virtue. And this is to turn the soul toward nothing of the things here, but to be strained with zeal toward what is set before us in hopes through faith.

Let us examine the saying again. “A season,” he says, “to give birth, and a season to die.” Would that for me too the birth might be in season, and the death well-timed! For one could not say that this involuntary travail and the spontaneous death are being set before us now by the Ecclesiast as an achievement of virtue. For neither is travail at the will of the woman, nor is death in the free choice of those who die. And what is not in our power one could define neither as virtue nor as vice. So we must understand the well-timed birth, and the death that comes about in season. To me a birth seems to be ripe and not an abortion when, as Isaiah says, one who has conceived from the fear of God gives birth to one’s own salvation through the travail of the soul. For we become in a certain manner fathers of ourselves, when through good free choice we form and beget ourselves and bring ourselves forth into the light. And this we do by receiving God into ourselves, becoming children of God, children of power, and sons of the Most High; and again, as the Apostle says, [when] the form of Christ [is formed in] us. “For the man of God,” it says, “must be complete.” And complete is surely that one in whom the account of nature has been perfectly fulfilled. So if someone through virtue has made himself a child of God, having received authority for this noble birth, he has known the season of the good travail, and rejoices, according to the Gospel, with reason, “that a man has been born into the world.” But the one who has become a child of wrath, and a son of perdition, and offspring of darkness, a brood of vipers, an evil offspring, and all the other names by which the wicked birth is reproached, has not known the life-giving season. For one season gives birth into life, and not many. Whoever misses it, in the untimeliness of the birth, travailed with himself for perdition and delivered his soul to death. And if it is plain how we are born in season, it is clear to all how we die in season. Thus for the holy Paul every season was a timely season for the good death. For he cries in his own words, making a kind of oath, where he says, “I die every day, by my boasting in you,” and, “For your sake we are being put to death all the day long,” and, “We ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves.” And it is surely not unclear how Paul dies every day: he who never lives to sin, who always puts to death the members of the flesh, and carries about in himself the dying of the body of Christ, who is always crucified with Christ, who never lives for himself but has Christ living in him. This would be, in our judgment at least, the well-timed death, the one that brings about true life. “For I will kill,” he says, “and I will make alive”; so that we may be persuaded that it is truly a gift of God to be put to death to sin and made alive by the Spirit. For by killing, the divine voice promises to make alive. And what follows is like what has been said.

“A season,” he says, “to plant, and a season to pluck up what has been planted.” I know who our farmer is, and whose field we are. The one we have learned from Christ, the other from Paul, the servant of Christ. For the Lord says, “My Father is the farmer,” and the Apostle says to us, “You are God’s field.” The great farmer, then, knows how to plant only good things — “For God planted a paradise in Eden toward the east” — but he plucks up what is opposed to the good. For “every plant which my Father … did not plant [will be rooted up]” … and unbelief, and ingratitude toward the wonders done by the Lord: these are the plants that are being plucked up … For the proclamation of salvation must prevail. “The Gospel must be proclaimed in the whole world.” “Every tongue must confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Since, then, these things must surely come about, the unbelief that now prevails among some is not from the Father’s planting, but from the one who sows [weeds] alongside, or who plants beside the Master’s vineyard the vine-shoot of Sodom. What, then, we were taught in the Gospel by the voice of the Master, this we have now been taught also in the riddle of the Ecclesiast: that the same season is for receiving the saving plant of faith and for plucking up the weed of unbelief. And what has been said in part about the achievement in faith, one would understand consistently of every virtue too. A season to plant self-control, and to pluck up the plant of licentiousness. So too, when righteousness has been planted, the shoot of injustice is uprooted; and the plant of humility overturned conceit, and love, sprouting, withered the wicked tree of hatred; just as, from the opposite side, the tree of hatred — that is, iniquity multiplied — made love grow cold; and all the other things in the same way. So that we may not spend time telling each one, if we understand them similarly, we shall not go wrong.

Again the following saying agrees with the [preceding]. “For there is a season,” he says, “to kill, a season to [heal].” This is clearly [shown] in the prophetic word, which says in the person of God: “I will kill and I will make alive.” For if we do not kill enmity in ourselves, we shall not heal the loving disposition in us that has become sick through hatred. So too with all the other things that live against us for evil — I mean the wicked battle line of the passions, and this civil war that campaigns against us through pleasures and takes us captive by the law of sin: there is a season to kill them. For the slaughter of such things becomes the healing of what has been weakened by sin. Physicians say that worms, and certain other such creatures, are brought to life within the bowels from bad humours, whose life becomes disease to the body; but if those are destroyed by some drug …, the sick person returns to health again. Such passions of the body correspond to the illnesses of the soul: when anger sucks it dry from within, or unnerves the vigour and reasonings of the soul through resentment, or the beast of envy, or any other such evil that a bad way of life brings to life. The one who perceives that his soul feeds a beast within will use in good season the drug that destroys the passions. And this is the teaching of the Gospel, so that when those have been slain, healing may come to the one who has done it.

“A season to pull down, and a season to build up.” These things can be learned from what was said by God to the prophet Jeremiah, to whom power was given from God first to pull down, and to root out, and to dig away, and then to set up again, and to build up, and to plant. For first the buildings of vice in us must be thrown down, and then a season and room may be found for the construction of the temple of God, which is built in souls, whose material becomes virtue. For “if anyone builds on this foundation gold or silver, precious stones,” these are named virtue; but “wood and hay and straw” interpret the nature of vice, which is prepared for nothing else than for consumption by fire. When, then, the buildings are of hay and straw — that is, of injustice and arrogance and the rest of the vice of life — the word commands us first to bring these to destruction, and then to make the gold of virtue the material for the construction of the spiritual house. For silver cannot grow together with straw, nor gold be stuck onto hay, nor the pearl onto wood. But if the one is to be, the other must surely be destroyed. “For what fellowship has light with darkness?” So the things of darkness will be pulled down first, and then the bright buildings of life will be constructed.

“A season to weep, and a season to laugh.” This saying is made clear by the voice of the Gospel spoken in the person of the Lord, which says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Now, then, is the season to weep; the season to laugh is laid up through hope; for the present dejection will become the mother of the gladness hoped for. And who would not spend all his life in lamentations and gloom, if he came to perceive himself, and knew within himself what he had and what he lost, and in what state nature was at the beginning and in what it is at present? Then there was no death, disease was absent; “mine” and “yours,” these wicked words, were banished from life. For as the sun was common, and the air common, and before all things God’s grace common, the blessing common, so the participation in every good was set before all on equal terms, at their disposal; the disease of greed was not known, and hatred of those who excel, arising from being worse off, did not exist. For there was no excelling at all. And countless other things besides, which one could not even set forth in speech, far surpassing in greatness what has been said: I mean equality of honour with the angels, freedom of speech before God, the contemplation of supramundane goods, our being made beautiful too with the unspeakable beauty of the blessed nature, showing in ourselves the divine image shining with the beauty of the soul. And instead of those things — such as the wicked swarm of passions, the evil wasps’ nest of sorrows — … which of the evils of life would one name first? All are of equal rank with one another, all take first place in the eminence of evils, all become occasions for equal lamentation. For what would one lament more in our wretchedness? From what would one bewail nature more — the short span of life, its toil, its beginning with tears and its ending in tears, pitiable infancy, … the many toils of those settled in age, the burden of marriage, the loneliness of the unmarried, the rootlessness of childlessness, the envy that wealth draws, the pain of poverty? And I am silent about the manifold differences of diseases, the disfigurements, the incurable rottings, the maimings of the senses, the derangements caused by demons, all that nature contains in itself, which each human being has in potential, having the passions in his nature. The madness of passionate loves, and the foul-smelling mire into which such frenzy ends, I pass over; and I do not speak of the disgust joined to nourishment through excretion, so as not to seem to post up life entirely in my discourse, showing our nature to be a maker of dung. Leaving all these and such things aside, I say that this above all is worthy of tears for those who perceive it: to know that, when this shadowy life has run past, there awaits us a certain expectation of judgment, and a zeal of fire that will consume the adversaries. Does not the one who reckons these and such things … ? It would therefore be the season now to take these things into one’s reasoning. For from being gloomy toward the present life [comes] committing no fault in it; [and so] the grace of gladness that has been promised will be laid up for us through hope; and hope does not put to shame, as the Apostle says.

What is added is like a repetition of what was said before. For having spoken of the right season for tears and for laughter, he added, “A season to beat the breast, a season to dance,” which is nothing else than the intensification of each of the things mentioned. For the deeply felt and heartfelt lament is called “beating the breast” by [Scripture], and likewise dancing signifies the intensification of gladness, as we learned such a thing in the Gospel, where it says, “We piped to you, and you did not dance; we lamented to you, and you did not beat your breasts.” So the history says that there was beating of breasts among the Israelites at the departure of Moses, and that David danced as he led the procession of the ark, when he [brought] it back from the foreigners, … not appearing in his accustomed bearing. For it says that he sang along with harmonious melodies, striking up on the musical instrument, and moved to the rhythm with his foot, and by the rhythmic motion of his body made public his inner disposition. Since, then, the human being is twofold — of soul, I mean, and body — and life too is twofold, correspondingly in each of the things active in us, it would be good, while beating our breasts for the bodily life — for the occasions for lament in this life are many — to prepare for the soul the harmonious dance. For the more life is darkened by dejection, the more the occasions of gladness are gathered for the soul. Self-control is sombre; humility is downcast; to suffer loss is lamentation; not to be equal to those in power is a cause of grief. But he who humbles himself will be exalted, and he who contends with poverty will be crowned, and he who teems with sores and shows his life to be worthy of lament in all respects will rest in the bosom of the Patriarch. In which may we too come to be, by the mercy of Jesus Christ who saves us, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of ages.