Today’s Office of Readings again is from Qoheleth. Qoheleth says:
“I thought again that whatever God does is immutable; there is nothing to add, nothing to take away. God works like this so we may have a sense of awe and wonder of Him. That which is has been; that which will be already is; God searches again for that which is already past.”
Perhaps Qoheleth was caught up in our human concept of time as linear, chronological, and sequential. God’s time is an ever present, and ever now. He breaks through our time and space and gives meaning to all.
In the second reading in the Office, St. Gregory of Nyssa alludes to this, I think. He said:
” ‘ The is a time to be born’, he says, ‘and a time to die.’ (Qo 3:2) Would that the heavens might give me a good time to die and a proper moment for death……For St. Paul each moment is fitting for a good death…. It is clear, then, in what manner Paul dies every day, he who did not live for sin, but mortified his flesh and carried always in himself the mortification of Christ…. This, to me, is a timely death that gives true life….. The word of God, in fact, promises life as a result of death.” –St. Gregory of Nissa, Om 6; PG 44, 702-705.
All things are vanity, as says Qoheleth, if one considers only the created world. All things speak of the richness of God, if one considers how God has entered and continues to enter the world in each moment of our lives. In the passing and dying there is life. That is the Christian message. That is what makes sense of the finiteness and provisionality of our world.
All of creation speaks of the beauty and purpose of God.
