I am always happy to speak about the Old Testament… After all it is not a part of the Scriptures that Christians in general know very well. Sure, we all probably have Genesis and Exodus down pretty well… but Ecclesiastes??
Let’s talk about the book
Except for a pretty famous song by the Byrds back in the 60s it not many who know much about it. But, it is a book with all sorts of literature within it. There is some autobiographical things, poetry, prose, etc. But overall, it is a wisdom book talking about life.
Scholars think it was written about the 3rd century before Christ. And it starts out talking about the authors investigation of life. What it is all about… many of those things we heard ourselves say… All those questions we think about and try to figure out.
Our reading today
Then the second part of the book is the authors brutally honest conclusions. We can really hear the words being said and it is very easy to apply it to our own lives… no niceties here no beating around the bush
The reading today focusses about how we act when we are young. We think young, we do young things and many of the things we did when we were young, we see today in the light of our wisdom, as absurd!!!
Absurdities of Absurdities
And that is exactly the authors point… We might remember the authors use of the phrase Vanities of Vanities…. He means this word not as in pride… but actually it can also be translated into absurdities of absurdities.
We should be remembering God throughout our lives. But we put other matters first. Quoheloth goes through a large list of things and examples and we can substitute our own things which distracted us from God. We wasted so much time on things that didn’t matter. We get older and our bodies slow down. Eventually we go back to God…. As I said the author is quite blunt. We do learn the things that are important over time…It is good that we here today put God and his gift of the Eucharist first.
Have a great day God Bless
Here is a link to today’s readings https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092620.cfm