In today’s first reading, Ecclesiastes 3: 1-11, we are
reminded that there “is an appointed time
for everything, and a time for every thing
under the heavens”: birth and death, dying and rising, peace and war, tearing
down and rising up, building and destroying what was built, planting and
reaping what was planted, weeping and laughing, killing and healing, rending
and sewing, keeping and throwing away, speaking and being silent, embracing and
refraining from embracing, seeking and losing, loving and hating. “Oh, my
goodness”, we might exclaim.
What the author of this passage is proclaiming is that nothing in this world
last forever! God alone is eternal! God
alone is unchangeable! What is here today may be gone tomorrow! I may be
enjoying success today but loss tomorrow. I may be
enjoying peace now but be in turmoil this afternoon or vice versa: I may be
struggling at this moment and rejoicing by noon today. I may be sick this month and recover next
month. I may be dying today and living forever in eternity tomorrow! I may have spent years building a fortune and see it dissipate in the future. The empire our forefathers and foremothers secured over time or which one administration built during its term may be collapsed by our successors.
The author of this Ecclesiastes passage states: “I have
considered the task that God has appointed for [His] sons [and daughters] to be
busied about. He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the
timeless into their hearts, without [our] ever discovering, from the beginning
to end, the work which God has done.” In short, as stated above, God alone is forever; God alone is unchangeable. Everything else is temporal and changeable.
"Blessed be the Lord, our Rock," we pray in today's responsorial psalm. To what "rock" am I clinging?
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