Homilies on Ecclesiastes 7

“A season to throw stones, and a season to gather stones.” The commander of the church’s forces has already increased the strength of his hearers by what he has shown, so that they can both strike their opponents and supply the means for striking. For what we were taught beforehand — by which we have learned to fit the measure of time to all things and to make right timing in everything the criterion of the beautiful — leads us to this power: that a certain arm of our soul may be understood, which sends at the target the stones that destroy the enemy, and calls them back again, so that whatever enemy we strike, we may always strike down the adversary with the same stones. Those, then, who look only to the letter and stand by the ready sense of what is said will perhaps fit Moses’ law to the present words, under which the law orders stones to be thrown at those found breaking the law, as we have learned from the history itself in the case of those [guilty] of … and of the one [who stole] the sacred things, and in the other faults for which the law prescribed punishment by stones. But I — if the Ecclesiast had made only the throwing of stones timely, and not also gathering stones, about which no law commands anything, nor does the history narrate a similar act — would have agreed with those who interpret the saying through the law, as though the season to throw stones were when someone [broke the law]. But now the addition that the stones must be gathered again, which is laid down by no law, leads us to another sense. Let us learn what kind of stones these are, which after the throw become again the property of the one who threw them. For when we have thrown the stones in season, we are taught to gather them again in season. To me, indeed, it seems that one should not take even the law in so lowly a way, according to its ready meaning. For what befitting God and great appears in the bare sense of what is written? If someone was caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath, ought the man for this reason to have been stoned, when no injustice appeared in the fault? For what wrong did a man do by [gathering] dry twigs scattered by chance in the desert for the use of fire? For he is not accused of taking what belonged to another, so that the injustice might seem reasonably punished; rather, what lay before all in common became for him the cause of the stoning. But because he did this on the Sabbath, he is for this reason condemned as a wrongdoer. Who does not know that each thing that is done is judged by its own nature, whether it is evil or not? And the time in which an action is performed is considered outside the nature of what is done. For what has the interval of time in common with what is accomplished by our free choice? If someone asks us what a day is, we shall surely answer that it is the sun’s being above the earth, and make its measure dawn and evening. But such an account of the day will not be fitted to some one alone of the days that come round in the weekly cycle; the account is the same for the first and second and up to the seventh, and the day of the Sabbath does not differ at all from the others in being a day. But if one examines the meaning of sin — that one must do nothing against one’s neighbour — we shall surely say, for example: “You shall [not] commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal,” and the rest, of which the general law, containing each in itself, is also that of loving one’s neighbour as oneself. These, kept and broken equally on every day, are surely either good or understood as the opposite. No one would think that what was judged evil when done today, whether the fault were murder or anything else forbidden, would be good on the following day. If, then, evil is always such, at whatever time it happens to be dared, so too what is blameless would not become blameworthy because of the time. If, then, gathering sticks and lighting a fire before the Sabbath is outside injustice and punishment, how does this very same thing become a fault on the following day? But I know the Sabbath of rest; I know the law of inactivity, which does not command a human being to be inactive by fettering him from natural activity. For it would command impossible things in ordering us to be inactive, for whom, apart from other works, the very form of life is a work: of the eyes, sight; of the hearing, its natural activity; of the nostrils, smell; of the mouth, the drawing in of air; of the tongue, speech; of the teeth, the service of food; of the inward parts, digestion; of the feet, movement; of the hands, … those things which these members are by nature made to do for us. How then can the law of inactivity be ratified for those whose nature does not admit idleness? How shall I persuade the eye not to see on the Sabbath, when it is its nature to see something in any case? How shall I hold back the activity of hearing? How will my sense of smell be persuaded to lay aside its perception of vapours on the Sabbath? And how will the inward parts not perform their own activity, serving the law, so that food remains undigested in the body, in order to show nature idle on the Sabbath? If, then, the rest of our body cannot accept the law of idleness (for what is not active will not be in life at all), [the observance] of the Sabbath is surely not [kept] … even if the hand or the foot remains motionless in the same posture and place. Since, then, the law is laid not on some part but on the whole human being, we shall not keep the law better by being inactive in one of the members, if, while our other senses are active according to nature, we break what was commanded. But the law is from God; and nothing commanded by God is of such a kind as to be, as it were, against nature, or to be shown outside the account of virtue. And irrational idleness is not virtue. We must seek, then, what the command of the [Sabbath] means. I say, then, that every legislation given by God has one aim: that those who have received the law should be pure of the work of vice; and every law that forbids what is prohibited commands us to keep Sabbath from wicked works. This is the aim of the tablets, of the Levitical observance, of the precision in [the] …: that we should be idle and inactive in those things whose work is vice. If, then, one takes the law in this way, that the human being is to be idle in vice, I too agree that the wise Ecclesiast sets a season for throwing stones at one who gathers wood for himself — by which the collecting of the twigs of vice, gathered as fuel for fire, is prevented. But if one persists in love of the letter, I do not know how he would reckon what befits God in the law. So we must understand what the stones are that are thrown at such a one, so that the zeal for gathering sticks may not reach its end. If the wood is that by which the fire will be kindled for the one who gathered it — and surely these things are not unclear to one who brings to bear any mystical account at all; for well does the Apostle name the wicked building “wood, straw and hay,” because such buildings become fire in the season of judgment, and “the chaff,” says the voice of the Gospel, “is prepared for fire,” and it declared the fruitless branch fit only for fire — it would be clear that the wood gathered in preparation for fire is the vain pursuits of life, and this is the one who is struck with stones in season, whom one would not be wrong to understand as the reasoning that inclines to evil. And we must surely understand that the reasonings that destroy vice are the stones slung with good aim by the Ecclesiast, which must always both be sent and be gathered: sent to pull down what is lifted up against our life, and gathered so that the bosom of the soul may always be full of such supplies, so that the throw against the enemy may be at hand, if ever he should otherwise conceive a plot against us. From where, then, shall we gather stones with which to bury the enemy? I heard the prophecy saying, “Holy stones roll upon the earth.” These would be the words coming down to us from the God-inspired Scripture, which we must gather in the bosom of the soul, so as to use them in season against those who trouble us; whose throw is so good that it both destroys the enemy and does not leave the hand of the thrower. For the one who strikes down with the stone of self-control the licentious reasoning, which gathers through pleasures the fuel of fire, has both defeated it with the throw and always carries the weapon in his hand. So too righteousness becomes a stone against injustice, destroys it, and is kept in the bosom of the one who threw it. In the same way, all things understood in the better sense become destructive of the worse and are not separated from the one who achieves virtue. And according to our account, one must throw the stones in season and gather stones in season in this way: always sending the good throws to destroy what is worse, and never letting the abundance of such weapons fail us.

The next saying in sequence [sets out] the season and the unseasonableness of a certain embracing. The wording is this: “A season to embrace, and a season to be far from embracing.” These thoughts could not become plain to us otherwise unless the word were first understood from Scripture, so that it may become clear to us of what the God-inspired word is accustomed to use this expression. The great David indicated it through the Psalms, and cries, saying, “Encircle Zion, and embrace her”; and this same Solomon, when he made the inward union of the one lovingly disposed toward wisdom, says among other things by which our union with virtue comes about, and adds this: “Honour her, that she may embrace you.” If, then, David exhorts us to embrace Zion, and Solomon said that those who have honoured wisdom are embraced by her, perhaps we shall not miss the fitting sense, if we learn the thing whose embrace is timely. For Zion is a mountain rising above the citadel of Jerusalem. So the one who urges you to embrace her exhorts you to grow together with the lofty way of life, so as to reach the very acropolis of the virtues, which he indicates by the riddle of the name Zion. And the one who makes you dwell with wisdom proclaims to you the good news of the embrace that follows from her. So there is a season to embrace Zion and to be embraced by wisdom, the name Zion indicating the loftiness of the way of life, and wisdom signifying by a part the whole of virtue. If, then, we have learned through what has been said the timeliness of the embrace, we have been taught through the same things of which the separation from union is more profitable. “For there is a season,” he says, “to be far from embracing.” One who has become familiar with virtue has been estranged from his relation to vice. “For what fellowship has light with darkness, or Christ with Beliar?” Or how is it possible for one who serves two opposed masters to be well disposed to both? For love of the one has produced hatred of the other. When, then, the loving disposition acquires the beautiful — and this is what is timely — estrangement from the opposite has truly followed. If you truly loved self-control, you would have hated its opposite. If you look lovingly toward purity, you have clearly abhorred the mire of the evil one’s embrace. And if someone should take the meaning of “embracing” to refer to the embrace of wealth, this saying too shows what kind of wealth it is good to embrace, and the embrace of what kinds of possessions to send away. I know a treasure that is striven for: the one hidden in the field, not the one that appears to all. I know, again, a wealth that is dishonoured: not the one hoped for, but the one that appears before the eyes. The voice of the Apostle teaches this, saying, “Since we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal.” If we have understood these things, let us also [understand] the following saying through them.

“For there is a season,” he says, “to seek, and a season to lose.” For one who has understood through what has been examined from what one should keep oneself far from embracing, and to what one should be joined, would know both what one should seek and of what things the loss is gain. “For there is a season,” he says, “to seek, and a season to lose.” What, then, is it that I must seek, so as to attain the due season? Prophecy shows what must be sought, saying, “Seek the Lord and be strengthened,” and again, “Seek the Lord, and call on him when you find him,” and “Let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad.” I have learned, then, through what has been said what one must seek: that of which the finding is the very act of always seeking. For seeking is not one thing and finding another; but the gain of seeking out is the very seeking. Do you want to learn the right time too, what the season is for seeking the Lord? I say briefly: the whole of life. For in this case alone every effort is the season for effort. For it is not good to seek the Lord at some appointed season and limited time; but never to leave off at all, always seeking: this is the true right time. “For my eyes,” it says, “are continually toward the Lord.” Do you see how carefully the eye searches out what is sought, giving itself no relaxation nor any interval in the contemplation of what is sought? For by adding “continually” it showed the unceasing and uninterrupted character of the effort. In the same way let us understand also the season to lose, judging it gain to lose that whose possession becomes a loss to its owner. Love of money is an evil possession: then let us lose it. Resentment is a wicked thing stored up: then let us throw it away. Licentious desire is a destructive possession: let us become poor in this above all, so that through such poverty we may gain the kingdom. “For blessed are the poor in spirit,” that is, those who lack such wealth and all the other treasures of the devil. More blessed, indeed, is never to have acquired any at all, so that we may be entirely without possession of what defiles. But it is no less good for one who has been taken by the wicked acquisition to lose such possessions and bring them to destruction. But never to have any share at all in such things is beyond human nature; whereas to destroy them once received — for this the power of human beings too has strength. Therefore to have had none of the adversary’s possessions belongs to the Lord alone, who shared the same sufferings with us without sin. “For the ruler of this world comes,” he says, “and finds nothing of his own in me.” But to cleanse oneself through careful repentance can be seen also in the case of human beings who make themselves bright through virtue. Paul lost the wicked possession of unbelief, through the grace of prophecy working in him; he became full of the treasure he sought. Isaiah lost, in the cleansing of the divine coal, all filth of word and thought; for this reason he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Everyone, in partaking of the better, loses all that is understood as its opposite. So the self-controlled loses licentiousness, the righteous injustice, the modest arrogance, the well-disposed envy, the loving enmity. For just as the blind man in the Gospel found what he did not have by losing what he had — for when the blindness was taken away, the gleam of light came in instead — and in the case of the leper, when the disease vanished, the grace of health returned, and in the case of those who rose from death, deadness withdrew at the presence of life, so too in the philosophy set before us one cannot acquire any of the lofty things without having lost the zeal for what is earthly and lowly. For in finding these, the more valuable things are lost to us; and conversely the loss of these will bring about the finding of the valuable. This we have learned from the voice of the Lord: “[He who loves] his soul will lose it, and he who loses his soul for my sake will find it.” For the soul’s being found among the things pursued in matter becomes the cause of its not being found among the true goods; and conversely the deprivation and loss of these becomes the possession of what is hoped for. “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his soul?” “A season,” he says, “to seek, and a season to lose.” If, then, we have learned what the gain sought is, which is found by losing what was evilly acquired, let us seek the one and lose the other: let us seek the good things, let us lose the evil.

Well and fittingly to what has been examined the sequence of what is written is added. For it says, “A season to keep, and a season to cast out.” To keep what? Clearly what we have found, [whose] loss was thought profitable … A right thought has come to you; there has entered a desire to see God; your soul has thirsted for God, the mighty, the living; a longing has come to you to be in the courts of the Lord — and the courts of the Lord, in my view at least, would be the virtues, in which the Word dwells, and everyone who follows the Word. Keep these, so that the wealth of the pure possessions of your mind may not flow away from you. Some contrary reasoning slips in, like a secret thief, bringing about the disappearance of the pure thoughts: it must be cast out and sent away from the mind. For in driving it off, the treasure of good things will be kept safe for us. But if the destroyer is not cast out, there will be no gain from the possession, in the plotting of the burglars. Since, then, we have been taught the season to seek, and everyone who seeks finds, let us set an exact guard on the treasure for what has been found. “With all watchfulness,” it says, “keep your heart” — after finding, keeping the grace that has been found; as the one who came in faith found the purity that comes through the washing. But the labour is greater in keeping what one has received than in finding what one did not have. As, then, we said that the right time for seeking is not limited to some period, but that the whole of life is one season for that good seeking, so we declare that the season for keeping too is measured by the whole of life, setting out now too the same voice of prophecy, which says, “My eyes are continually toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the snare.” For in this lies the inviolable keeping of our good possession for us: in making God the keeper of what is ours. For when my eyes are continually toward the Lord, then the snares of the adversary become ineffective, by which he contrives his plot against the precious things in the soul. “Do not give your foot to be moved,” it says, “and he who keeps you will not slumber.” So the present saying is consistent with the preceding one. That one commanded us to seek so that we may find; this one counsels us to keep, so that we may not lose. And the manner of keeping the good things is in casting out what is understood as their opposite; just as in a city at war the guard becomes safer when the traitors have been cast out, but as long as they are inside, the hidden ones plot more than the open enemies. “For there is a season,” he says, “to keep, and [a season to cast out].”

The next sequence of the discourse leads the soul to a greater philosophy concerning intelligible things. For it shows that the universe is continuous with itself and the harmony of intelligible things has no break, but there is a certain concord of beings with one another; and the universe is not split off from its connection with itself, but all things remain in being by the power of what is. And what truly is, is either goodness itself, or whatever name signifying the incorruptible nature one conceives beyond this. For how could anyone find a name for that which the divine voice of the Apostle says is above every name? Except that whatever name is found to interpret the unutterable power and nature, what is signified is surely good. This good, then, or what is beyond the good, both is itself in very truth, and through itself has given and gives to the things that are both the power to come to be and continuance in being. But everything contemplated outside it is non-existence. For what is outside being is not in being. Since, then, vice is contemplated as opposite to love, and God is complete virtue, vice is then outside God; and its nature is grasped not in its being, but in its not being good. For we have given the name “vice” to what is outside the notion of the good; thus vice is contemplated as opposite to the good as non-being is divided against being. Since, then, by the self-determination of our impulse we flowed away from the good — just as those not in light are said to see darkness, for seeing darkness consists in seeing nothing — then the non-existent nature of vice received substance in those who flowed away from the good; and it exists as long as we are outside the good. But if again the self-determining motion of our will should be torn away from its relation to the non-existent and grow together with what is, that which no longer has being in me will not have being in me at all. For evil lying by itself outside free choice does not exist. But I, having sewn myself on to what truly is, remain in what is, which always was and always will be and now is. These seem to me to be the thoughts which the season to tear and the season to sew suggest: so that, torn away from that, … [to what] … the cleaving is good. “For it is good for me,” it says, “to cleave to God, to put my hope in the Lord.” And one might usefully apply the counsel to many other things too, such as: “Drive out the wicked one from among yourselves.” These things the divine Apostle commands concerning the one condemned for the lawless union, commanding that he be torn away from the common fullness of the church, “so that,” he says, “a little leaven” of the condemned man’s vice “may not make useless the whole lump” of the church’s prayer. But the one [torn away] through sin he sews on again through [love], “lest such a one be swallowed up by excessive sorrow.” So he knows how in season to tear away a stained part from the tunic of the church, and again in season to sew it on, when through repentance it has been washed of its defilement. And many such things can be seen, both in the more ancient narratives and in our own life, all that is carried out with discernment in the churches. For you know from whom we tear ourselves away, and to whom we are always sewn on. For [from the fellowship] of heresy [we tear ourselves] …, then seeing the tunic of the church untorn, when it is torn away from fellowship with heresy. Whether, then, the passage philosophizes about beings according to the contemplation we examined earlier, or teaches such things through this counsel, the saying contains in every respect what is beneficial and useful, tearing away in season those whose union is wicked, and joining again in season.

Let us proceed to what comes next in the discourse, to which the account contemplated according to the loftier philosophy seems to me to have a closer affinity with the text. For the season to be silent is put first, and after the silence he gave the season to speak. When, then, and about what is it better to be silent? One who looks to character might say that in many cases silence is more seemly than speech, as Paul distinguishes the right time for silence and for speech, sometimes legislating silence and sometimes permitting speech: “Let no rotten word come out of your mouth” — this is the law of silence; “but if there is any good word for the building up of faith, that it may give grace to those who hear” — this is the season to speak. “Let the women be silent in the churches” — again he gave the season to silence. “But if they wish to learn anything they do not know, let them ask their own husbands at home” — again he showed the right time for speech. “Do not lie to one another” — this too is a right time for silence. “Let each one speak truth with his neighbour” — again the authority of speech. And many such things can be said from the older Scripture as well: “When the sinner stood against me, I was deaf and humbled and kept silent from good things,” and “like one deaf I did not hear, and like one mute not opening his mouth.” One who remains unmoved toward repaying evil becomes voiceless; but where it is fitting to use speech, he opens his mouth in parables, utters problems, fills his mouth with praise, makes his tongue a pen. But why, when there are countless examples in Scripture, should one refine the discourse in what is agreed? What came to my mind before these, as the right time for silence and speech agrees with the contemplation given about tearing and sewing, this I wish to take up again and say briefly. For there the word, having torn away the soul evilly grown on to the opposite, led it into union with what truly is through cleaving — which is beyond word, as the preceding discourse explained. And here, for this reason, silence seems to me to have been put first: that is, because that which is above every thought and name, which the soul torn away from evil both seeks continually and longs to be sewn on to once found, is higher than every interpreting voice. Whoever contends to drag it down under the meaning of [a word] unwittingly offends against the Divine. For what is believed to be above all is surely also above word. And one who tries to grasp the boundless by word no longer allows that to be above all against which he sets it, thinking that his own word is something of such a kind and so great as the word could contain in speaking, not knowing that in being persuaded that the Divine is beyond knowledge, in this the God-befitting notion of what truly is is kept; because everything that is in creation looks by nature to what is akin to it. And none of the things that exist, having come to be outside itself, remains in being. Fire is not in water, nor water in fire, nor the land creature in the deep, nor the water creature on dry land, nor the earthly creature in the air, nor again the airy creature in the earth; but each, remaining within its own limits of nature, exists as long as it remains within its own limits. But if it should come outside itself, it will also come outside being. And just as the power of the senses, remaining in its natural activities, cannot pass over to the neighbouring one — for neither does the eye perform the functions of hearing, nor does hearing taste, nor touch speak, nor the tongue do the work of sight or of hearing, but each has as the limit of its own power its natural activity — so the whole creation cannot come outside itself through comprehending contemplation, but always remains in itself; and whatever it sees, it sees itself; and even if it should think it sees something beyond itself, it has no nature to see what is outside itself. For example, it forces itself to pass beyond the notion of extension in the contemplation of beings, but it does not pass beyond. For along with every thought that is found it surely contemplates the extension that is grasped together with the subsistence of what is thought; and extension is nothing else than creation. But that good which we have learned both to seek and to keep, being above creation, is above comprehension. For how would our mind, travelling through extended stretching, grasp the unextended nature, by the analysis of time always searching out what is older than the things it finds? It has run past all that is known through its busy inquiry; but it finds no device to run past the notion of the age, how it might set itself outside itself and go beyond what is contemplated before all beings and the age itself. But as though one found oneself on some mountain ridge … Let it be supposed that there is a smooth and sheer rock, reddish in appearance below, stretching down to an infinite length, and from above holding up to the height that summit which, in the projection of its brow, falls sheer to some immense depth: what one standing there would likely feel, touching with the tip of his foot the ridge that overhangs the depth, and finding no footing any longer for the foot nor hold for the hand — this, it seems to me, the soul too feels when it has passed beyond what can be walked on in extended things, in the search for the nature that is before the ages and without extension, having nothing to grasp: no place, no time, no measure, nothing else of this kind; it does not admit the stepping-on of our mind; but, [slipping] on every side …, it grows dizzy and is at a loss, and turns back again to what is akin to it, content to know only so much about what lies above, as to be persuaded that it is something other than the nature of what is known. For this reason, when the word comes to what is beyond word, then it becomes the season to be silent, and to hold uninterpreted, in the secret of conscience, the wonder at that unutterable power, knowing that the great ones too spoke of the works of God and not of God, saying, “Who will speak the mighty acts of the Lord?” and “I will recount all your works,” and “Generation will praise your works.” These they speak of and go through, and entrust to the voice the declaration of what has come to be; but when the word is about him who is above every notion, through what they say they legislate silence outright. For they say that of his magnificence, his glory, his holiness there is no limit. O the wonder! How the word feared to draw near to the glory of the divine wonder, so that it did not even grasp the wonder of one of the things contemplated outside him! For it did not say that there is no limit to the essence of God, judging it altogether daring to bring this into thought; but it marvels in word at the magnificence contemplated upon the glory. And again it could not see the essence even of the glory itself; but it was struck with amazement when it perceived the glory of his holiness. How far, then, he kept from inquiring into the nature, what it is, he who could not marvel at the last of the things that appear! For he did not marvel at his holiness, nor at the glory of the holiness; but having proposed to marvel only at the magnificence of the glory of the holiness, he failed even at the wonder of this. For the limit of what was marvelled at did not come within his mind. Therefore he says, “Of his glory, of his magnificence, of his holiness there is no limit.” So in discourse about God, when the inquiry is about the essence, it is the season to be silent; but when it is about some good activity, the knowledge of which comes down even to us, then it is the season to speak of the mighty acts, to proclaim the wonders, to recount the works, and to use the word up to this point. But in what lies beyond, not to permit creation to go beyond its own limits, but to be content if it knows itself. For if, in our view at least, creation has not yet known itself, nor grasped what the essence of the soul is, what the nature of the body, whence the things that exist come, whence births from one another, how what is not receives substance, how what is is dissolved into what is not, what the harmony from opposites in this world is — if creation does not know itself, how will it recount the things above itself? So there is a season to be silent about these things; for silence is better in them. And there is a season to speak of the things through which our life advances toward virtue, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of ages. Amen.