The Daily Office, 5th Week of Ordinary Time

The Daily Office

"For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil." (Eccles 12:14)

So, what is it with this "old grump," as one friend put it? Basically, his complaint is this: "One fate comes to all alike, and this is as wrong as anything that happens in this world. As long as people live, their minds are full of evil and madness, and suddenly they die" (9:3). It doesn't seem to matter how hard you work, how righteous you try to be, how giving you try to be to others. The same fate seems to come to all, good and evil. We suffer equally, then we all die equally.

To plod through Ecclesiastes, as the Daily Office has had us doing for nearly two weeks, is to be reminded that holy Scripture is the record of a conversation between God and those who have listened as well as they could. This book is what one man, perhaps King Solomon, heard from God as best he could. And if we think that being "religious" is the ticket to constant prosperity and happiness, then we need to hear the truth that this Teacher tells us: "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity."

Except that perhaps his problem stemmed from his own vanity: "I saw all deeds that are done under the sun" (1:13). Really? Do any of us see all the deeds that are done by every person? Or is our sight limited to what we see in the fleeting moment that our path crosses with that person's path, before they separate, and we see noting of that person's past or future. Indeed, every human being is a "secret thing" to us. Are we not even secrets to ourselves? How well do we even understand our own actions?

Only God sees the secret things that we hide from others, and from ourselves. And God will bring them into judgment. But we who know the rest of the story know who is waiting for us at that judgment: Jesus and the Cross from which divine mercy flows from that wounded side. The Teacher of Ecclesiastes braces us for that judgment. Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, guarantees that we need not fear the judgment.