Homilies on Ecclesiastes 8

“A season to love, and a season to hate.” Who, then, will have his hearing so cleansed as to receive purely the word about loving, [admitting] nothing of filthy love into himself? Perhaps our ears too need the fingers of Jesus, so that through the divine touch of the true Word the hearing power of our soul may be freed from all filth that blocks the hearing, so as both to understand the praiseworthy love and to receive in the soul what the season to love is and what the season to hate. I do not think this season is anything other than the beneficial. For the benefit from each of these, in my judgment at least, is the right timing of the use of both; so that if what is done should come outside what is profitable, it would be outside the season too. But first, I think, we must understand what is signified by these two words — I mean “to love” and “to hate” — so that we may thus also perceive by reason their timely use. Love is the inward relation to what is desired, effected through pleasure and passionate attachment; hatred is estrangement from what is unpleasant and turning away from what gives pain. Each of these dispositions can be used profitably and also for the opposite, and the whole virtuous life has, as it were, its beginning from here. For to whatever we incline in love, that we make our own in our souls, and toward whatever we are disposed with hatred, from that we are estranged. For whether the soul’s relation is toward the beautiful or toward the evil, what is loved is somehow blended into the soul. And whatever hatred falls between, of that it brings about the separation, whether of the beautiful or of the worse. So it would be necessary to examine what is by nature lovable and what hateful, so that, using such a disposition of the soul in season, we may become estranged from evils through hatred and be blended with the nature of good things. And would that human nature had been taught this before all things — I mean the discernment of the beautiful and what is not such! For the passions would have had no entry against our life if we had come to know the beautiful from the beginning. But as it is, making irrational sense-perception the criterion of the beautiful at the first, we are brought up from the beginning with the judgment about beings that arises in us [from it], and for this reason we are hard to tear away from the things thought beautiful by sense, having made our relation to them our own by being reared with them. What brings some pleasure to the eyes by fine colour appears beautiful to human beings, whether in soulless matter or in living spectacles. Melody is beautiful to the hearing; and in flavours and smells the beautiful is defined, the one by taste, the other by smell. But the heaviest and most irrational of all is touch, through which licentious pleasure takes first place in nature in the vote on the beautiful. Since, then, the senses are born together with us as soon as we come to be, and we grow up with them in our first life — and the sensing power has a great kinship with irrational life, for all such things are seen in the irrational animals too — while the mind is somehow hindered from its proper activity, not finding room in infancy, but is in a manner squeezed out by the dominance of the more irrational sense: for this reason the misdirected use [of the senses] becomes the beginning and ground of the life of vice. For since our nature is in a sense twofold, blended of intelligible and sensible, our life too is accordingly twofold, each arising in us correspondingly: bodily in the sensible part, and incorporeally in the other. Likewise the beautiful and what is not such are not the same for each form of our life, but for the intelligible it is intelligible, while for the sensible and bodily part it is such as sense wishes. Since, then, sense grows with us from our first birth, while the mind waits for the advance to the proportioned age, so as to be able to appear gradually in the subject, for this reason the mind, which arises little by little, is ruled by sense, and is always forcibly obedient to it, judging beautiful or base whatever sense chooses or rejects. For this reason the perception of the truly good becomes hard and difficult to achieve for us: because we have been taken beforehand by the criteria of sense, defining the beautiful in what gladdens and pleases. For just as one cannot look at the beauties in heaven when mist has filled the air overhead, so neither does the eye of the soul see clearly toward virtue, having been taken up, as it were, by a fog upon its sight through pleasure. Since, then, sense looks to pleasure, and the mind is hindered by pleasure from seeing virtue, this becomes the beginning of vice: that the mind too, ruled by sense, has voted for the irrational judgment about the … beautiful; and if the eye says that the beautiful is in the fine colour of what appears, the mind too inclines with it. And likewise with the rest: what gladdens the senses has carried the vote for the beautiful. But if it had somehow been possible from the beginning for the true judgment about the beautiful to arise in us, the mind testing the good by itself, we would not have become cattle-like, enslaved to irrational sense …

So that such confusion in us may be distinguished, and what is by nature lovable, and again what is otherwise, may be recognized without error, the Ecclesiast now says in his discourse: “A season to love, and a season to hate.” Through these he distinguishes the nature of things, showing what is beneficially loved and what hated. For youth, boiling with the passions of its age, says that it is the season for it to love what is dear to youth. But the Ecclesiast cries out against youth, defining another season for pure love. For he says that the erring relation of the soul to what is out of place is not love at all. For just as, when nature is prospering in health, thirst comes to the body in season, but for those in whom the bite of the thirst-viper has produced such a disposition no one would say that thirst is at work in season — for in them thirst is not a natural appetite but a disease — so too the filthy love of youth is not love but a disease, arising in the mind and judgment from the bite of age. Not every love, then, is timely, but only the love that is directed to what alone is lovable. But one cannot receive clear knowledge of these things without dividing the account thus in contemplation. Of the good things pursued by human beings, some are really such as they are called, while others have a false name. For those that do not give temporary enjoyment, nor are such that what seems beautiful to someone becomes useless to others, but are good always and throughout and in all things for those in whom they come to be — these are truly good, always the same, and [not] admitting the mixture of the worse. These things, for those who examine precisely, are contemplated in the divine and eternal nature alone. But all the other things that are beautiful to sense, appearing beautiful through the deceit of fancy, are neither by nature nor do they subsist, but, being of the flowing and passing nature, through some deceit and vain preconception they are thought by the uninstructed to be real. If, then, holding on to unstable things, they do not reach out for the things that always stand — the Ecclesiast seems, as though standing on some high lookout, to cry out to human nature through what he says: “A season to love, and a season to hate,” because the truly good things are other, which are themselves beautiful and make those who share in them such. For whatever is shared in is by nature, toward that the sharer too must be changed along with it; as the mouth of one who has taken fragrant spices through the mouth becomes fragrant, and again foul-smelling in one who eats garlic or some other of the fouler things. So since every filth of sin is foul-smelling, while on the contrary virtue is the fragrance of Christ, and the loving relation naturally brings about a blending with what is loved, whatever we love through affection, that we become: either the fragrance of Christ or a stench. For the one who has loved the beautiful will himself be beautiful, the goodness of what has come to be in him changing the one who received it into itself. … For this reason the One who always is sets himself before us as food, so that, receiving him into ourselves, we may become what he is. For he says, “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” So the one who loves this flesh is not a lover of his own flesh, and the one who is disposed toward this blood will be pure of perceptible blood. For the flesh of the Word, and the blood within this flesh, have not one grace only, but are sweet to those who taste, desirable to those who long for them, and lovely to those who love. But if someone turns his love toward things that do not subsist, then of necessity the one who comes to be in them becomes such as they are by nature. Since, then, among the things that exist one is true and the other vain, [the Ecclesiast speaks thus] so that through the contrast we may understand the nature of what truly is. For so all the saints do, bringing back those who have strayed from the straight road and travel by the wandering one to the road from which they turned aside, crying out from afar, “Flee the road on which you are going; for there are robbers on it and highwaymen and ambushes of murderers,” so that at once the traveller may turn from the danger of the destructive road, and his withdrawal from it may become guidance to the road that saves. So too the great Ecclesiast was crying from above to human nature wandering in a trackless place and not on a road, as the Prophet says, saying outright through what he utters: “Why do you wander through life, O human beings? Why do you love vain things, and [busy yourselves] with these, which have no substance? There is another road, without wandering and saving: love that, walk on that through love — whose name is truth and life and incorruptibility and light and such things. But this road by which you now run is worthy of hatred and aversion; for it is without light and enclosed in darkness, and leads to cliffs and pits and haunts of wild beasts and ambushes of robbers.” So the one who said, “A season to love,” showed what is truly lovable and beloved; and the one who prescribed the season for hatred taught from what we must turn away. Having learned, then, what is by nature lovable, let us cling to it through love, never turned aside by lack of discernment about the beautiful, spending our love on the things which the great David too forbids, saying, “Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek falsehood?” For one thing alone is by nature lovable: what truly is, about which the legislation of the Decalogue says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind.” And one thing again is hateful in truth: the inventor of vice, the enemy of our life, about whom the law says, “You shall hate your enemy.” For the love of God becomes the strength of the one who loves, while the disposition toward vice brings ruin to the one who loves evil. [For] the prophecy says: “[I will love] you, O Lord, my strength; the Lord is my firm foundation and my refuge and my deliverer.” And about the opposite it says, “But he who loves injustice hates his own soul; he will rain snares upon sinners.” The whole of life, then, is the season for love toward God, and the whole of life for estrangement from the adversary. And the one who comes to be outside the love of God for a little of life surely comes to be outside him from whose love he has been separated. And the one who has come to be outside God must be outside the light, because God is light; and outside life and incorruptibility and every thought and thing contemplated toward the better, all of which God is. For the one who is not in these is surely in their opposites. So darkness and corruption and utter destruction and death await such a one. The word of the Ecclesiast, having distinguished these things in a short saying, shows them by timely love and hatred exercised in season, revealing the nature of each of the things understood as opposites. “A season,” he says, “to love the good, and again a season to hate the opposite.” And he says: “You, O human being, [should direct] your reason to look toward the beautiful.” For the reversed and erring disposition of our soul toward each of these is the root and beginning of sin. “For no one,” it says, “can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other.” The contrast has taught who is the one who rules evilly, from whom we must be estranged through hatred, and who the one who rules his subject for good, to whom it is fitting to be joined through love. But if someone holds to what is hateful and despises what is lovable, this is the one who exchanges the right times of love and hatred to his own harm. For the one who despises a thing will be destroyed by it, while the one who holds to destruction will acquire for himself what he held to. Having distinguished, then, by reason the things understood in terms of virtue and of vice, you will recognize the right time of how one must stand toward each of them. Self-control and pleasure, temperance and licentiousness, moderation and conceit, goodwill and ill will, and all the things understood as opposites, are clearly pointed out to you by the Ecclesiast, so that, being well disposed in soul toward them, you may take profitable counsel. There is a season, then, to love self-control and to hate pleasure, so that you may not become a lover of pleasure but rather a lover of God; and all the other things likewise — love of strife, love of gain and …, and all that through the use of love for what ought not to be loved separate one from the relation to the good. As it were in passing we have learned a doctrine: that every movement of the soul was constructed for good by the one who made our nature; but if the erring use of such movements has produced the occasions for vice, then our self-determining power, being a beautiful thing, becomes, when it is active toward evil, the last of evils. And conversely the power that drives away what is unpleasant, whose name is hatred, is an instrument of virtue, when it is armed against the opposite; but it becomes a weapon of sin when it is set in opposition to the good. So every creature of God among the things constructed in us is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; but the ungrateful use of them made the creature a passion, through which the kinship with God departs, and the opposites, coming in instead, are set up in the place of God, so that for such people the passions are made gods. So for the gluttonous the belly becomes a god; so the greedy make their disease an idol for themselves; so those darkened by deceit in this age in the eyes of the soul have made vainglory a god for themselves. And to put it briefly: to whatever one has yoked his own reasoning … and made it slave and subject, that he has made a god in his own passion; he would not have suffered this unless he had made the evil his own through love. If, then, we have understood the right time of love and hatred, let us love the one and [hate] the other.

“For there is a season,” it says, “of war, and a season of peace.” You see the battle line of the opposing passions, the law of the flesh campaigning against the law [of the mind]. Attend to the varied arrangement of the battle, how manifold is the adversary’s generalship against your city: he sends spies, wins over traitors, sets ambushes on the roads, gathers allies, and campaigns against you with those who fight hand to hand, the cavalry, and all such things. And surely you are not ignorant of the sense of what is said: who the traitor is, who the spy, who the men in ambush, who the slingers, who the archers and close fighters and the squadron of horsemen. We too, then, seeing all these things, must arm ourselves, summon our allies, and examine our subjects to see whether anyone is minded with the enemy, foresee the ambushes by the roadside, secure ourselves against the missiles with shields, [meet] those who grapple with us hand to hand from above, and trench off the approach of the horsemen against us. It would also be fitting for some to be applied against the siege engines. But surely we need no discourse to interpret each thing: how the enemy of the city of each of us — the one in the soul, [built] by God — tests our strength through spies, and has some of our own who become traitors to our strength. So that the thought may be revealed more clearly: the first attack of temptation, from which the passions take their beginning, is such. This becomes the spy of our strength. For example: a sight fell on the eye that can renew desire. Through this, then, the enemy spies out the strength in you, whether it is strong and well prepared, or slack and easily taken. For if you were not troubled by the figure, nor was the effort of your mind loosened toward what appeared, but you let the encounter pass without passion, at once you terrified the spy, showing the spy a phalanx of hoplites bristling with spears — I mean the preparation of your reasonings. But if sense is softened by pleasure toward the sight, and the image of the form slips into the mind through the eyes, then the general of those within, the mind, is defeated, as having nothing manly or vigorous, but being slack and feeble, and a crowd of traitors from the populace of the reasonings is assembled around the spy. These are the traitors of whom the Lord says, “A man’s enemies are those of his own household” — those that come out of the heart and defile the man, whose names can be learned clearly from the Gospel. From this point it will no longer be difficult for you to perceive in sequence each detail of that war’s arrangement, of the one who lies in ambush from the unseen, into which those fall who travel the road of life without foresight. For those who, under the guise of friendship and goodwill, drag the one who is persuaded down to the destruction of sin — these are the ones who lie in ambush on the roads: the praisers of pleasure, those who lead people by the hand to the theatres, those who show the ease of evil and by what they do call others to imitate the like, naming themselves brothers and friends for the destruction of those who perish. Of them it is written, “Every brother will supplant with the heel, and every friend will walk deceitfully.” If we have understood the ambushes, it would be clear also to search out [the slingers]. For the insolent and angry and abusive, by beginning the insults, slinging and hurling provoking words instead of missiles or stones, wound in the middle of the heart those who travel without breastplate and without guard. And those who transfer the passion of conceit and arrogance to the prancing of horses would not be wrong. For there are certain horses that are simply high-necked and high-headed, trampling down the modest with the swollen words of conceit as with hollow hooves. Of them Scripture says, “Let not the foot of arrogance come against me.” And the siege engines by which the joining of the wall is loosened one would rightly understand as love of money. For nothing is so heavy and hard to withstand in the enemies’ preparation as the engine of love of money. Even if [souls] have fortified themselves very greatly with the other virtues through their construction, the engine nonetheless often slips in through these too. For one can see love of money falling in even through [self-control], and through faith, and through exactness in the mysteries, through self-control and humility, and coming within all such things — this heavy and irresistible attack of evil. Hence some who are self-controlled and temperate, fervent in faith, sober in manner and moderate in character, are unable to hold out against this disease alone. If, then, we have understood the host of the enemies, it would be the season to make war. But no one would be confident of routing the opposing battle line without taking hold of the Apostle’s panoply. And surely no one is ignorant of the manner of that divine armour, by which he makes the one who stands against the phalanx of enemies invulnerable to the opposing missiles. For the Apostle, dividing the virtues into kinds, has made each kind of virtue a proper weapon for each of the vital parts in us. For weaving and plaiting righteousness together with faith, he prepares the breastplate for the hoplite through these, arming the soldier with a breastplate well and safely through both. For one cannot, separated from the other, become a safe weapon by itself to the one who wields it. For neither is faith without the works of righteousness able to save, nor again is the righteousness of life safe for salvation by itself, separated from faith. For this reason, weaving faith and righteousness together into this weapon as its materials, [he protects] the region about the heart … for in the breastplate the heart is understood. And he secures the head of the champion with hope, signifying that the good soldier should hold the hope of lofty things upward, like a crest. And the shield, the covering weapon, is unbreakable faith, which the point of the arrows cannot penetrate. And let us understand the arrows shot by the enemies to be the varied attacks of the passions. And the saving weapon that arms the right hand of those who champion against the enemies is the Holy Spirit, fearful to the adversary, saving to the one who wields it. And the whole teaching of the Gospel makes the feet secure, so that no part of the body is found naked and exposed to a blow.

If, then, we have learned with whom we must make war, and how to take up the battle, we must learn also the other part: with whom the word bears witness that we should be at truce and at peace. Who, then, is the good general to whom I shall make myself kin through peace? And who is the king of such an army? Surely it is clear — we have heard both from the God-inspired Scripture — that the heavenly army is the battle line of the angels? “For there came,” it says, “a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.” And Daniel sees myriads of myriads standing by, and sees thousands of thousands among those who minister. And the Prophet, bearing witness to such a thing, names the Lord of all “Lord of hosts” and “Lord of powers.” And to the son of Nun the one mighty in war says, “I am [the commander] of the power.” If we have understood what the good alliance is, and who the leader of these allies is, let us make a truce with him, let us run to his rule, let us become friends to the one who possesses such power. And the manner of our kinship with him is taught us by the one who brings about this friendship, the great Apostle, where he says, “Being justified, then, by faith, we have peace with God”; and again, “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were appealing through us; we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” For while we were by nature children of wrath in doing what is not fitting, … [we have been changed] by the right hand of the Most High, having put away ungodliness and worldly desires, living holily and righteously and godly. Through this peace we shall be joined to the true Peace. For so the Apostle says of him: “He himself is our peace.” This word is the end and the sum of all that is done in season. For we were taught to do all things in season so that we may achieve this for ourselves: to have peace with God through being set as enemies against the adversary. And surely, if one were to call the virtues the army of peace, toward which we must be friendly, he will not have his account outside the sense given; because every name and thought of virtue is referred to the Lord of the virtues. And why should one lengthen the discourse in such matters, when what has been said is enough to reveal the sense contained in the words?

But since through these … the soul of the one previously trained in these lofty lessons, he again leads up the soul of the one who follows the word to a lofty state, and says, “What advantage has the one who works in that at which he toils?” — which is equal to saying, “What [comes] from all human toils, from which there is no gain?” [One labours] with toils, trades, suffers loss, gains, goes to law, fights, goes away defeated, carries the winning vote, is pitied, is called blessed, stays at home, wanders among strangers — all that is seen in life in varied pursuits, some in some, others in others. What more does zeal about these things bring to the one who spends his own life through them? Did not living cease, and all was covered over by forgetfulness at once? And bereft of the things he pursued he goes away naked, bringing with him nothing of the affairs here except only his conscience about the affairs; from which, in a manner, this voice comes afterwards, [from heaven], to the one who wandered with life through such occupations: “What advantage has come to you from those many toils at which you toiled? Where are the splendid houses? Where the buried purses? Where the bronze statues and the voices of those who praised you? See, now there is fire and scourges, and the impartial judgment, and the examination of what was lived that cannot be deceived.” “What advantage, then, has the one who works in that at which he toils?” And after this, he says, “I saw the distraction which he gave to the sons of men, to be distracted with it: all the things which he made beautiful in its season. And he gave the age in their heart, so that a man may not find the work which God has made from beginning to end.” What does he mean by this? “I recognized,” he says, “from where human nature was distracted from life, taking its occasions from the divine benefits.” For he made all things for good, and gave to those who share in being a reason that distinguishes the better, through which the right timing of the use of each thing, once recognized, grants the perception of the beautiful to those who use it. But since it fell from the right judgment about beings, turned aside from settled reason by wicked counsel, the reversal of season turned what is useful in each case to the contrary experience. As if someone set on a table every preparation for a feast, and placed beside it certain utensils suited to help with the food, such as are made by those who love the art of such things — either fine knives by which the guests cut for themselves some of what is set before them, or the silver forks, whose hollow grown on at the other end is made suitable for the [eating] — and then one of those invited to the feast, reversing the use of what was set before him, should use each for what is not fitting, and with the knife should cut either himself or one of those beside him, and with the fork should prick out the eye of his neighbour or his own: one would say that so-and-so had misused the host’s preparation for evil, though the host did not prepare the cause of what would happen; rather, the evil use of what was set before him led the one who used it foolishly into this suffering. “So,” he says, “I too recognized that each thing came from God for every better purpose, if the use of each should come about in season as is fitting; but the turning aside of right judgment about beings turned good things into an occasion for evils.” I mean something like this: what is sweeter than the activity of the eyes? But when sight, having suffered passion, becomes the servant of such things, he says that what came to be for benefit has become a cause of evils; which is nothing else than that someone, using the beautiful badly, made the use a passion. So too all the other things that nature has from God lie in the free choice of those who use them, to become material either of good or of evil things. Therefore he says, “All the things which he made beautiful in its season. And he gave the age in their heart.” And the age, being a notion of extension, signifies all the creation that has come to be in it. So the passage shows, from what contains, everything that is contained. All things, then, that have come to be in the age God gave to the human heart for good, so that through the greatness and beauty of created things one might contemplate through them the one who made them. But those who were harmed through these things were harmed by not using each as is fitting and for what is profitable. Therefore he says, “So that a man may not find the work which God made” for the aim of benefit, in all the things that have come to be from the beginning of creation to the completion of the universe, since there is no evil among the things that exist. For evil has no nature to grow from good. And if the cause of all things is good, then surely all things that have their subsistence from the good are good.

Then he says, “I recognized that there is nothing good in them except to be glad and to do good in his life.” What has been said is summed up in the passage. For if the use of the divine works in season defines the beautiful for human life, the one beautiful thing would be the continual gladness in beautiful things, which is born of good works. For the working of the commandments now gladdens, through hope, the one who leads in beautiful works; and afterward, having received the enjoyment of the good hopes, it sets gladness before the worthy as their own, when the Lord says to those who have done good, “Come, you who are blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.” And what eating and drinking are to the body, by which nature is preserved, this to the soul is looking toward the good; and this is truly a gift of God … to gaze intently at God. For this is the [gift] which is interpreted in what is said next. The wording is this: “And every man who will eat and drink and see good in all his toil — this is a gift of God.” For as the fleshly man, he says, has his strength in eating and drinking, so the one who looks toward the good (and the true good would be the only Good) has as a gift of God in all his toil this very thing: always to look toward the good. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the might for the ages of ages. Amen.