Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 452

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
vanity of vanities!  All things are vanity!
What profit has man from all the labor
which he toils at under the sun?
One generation passes and another comes,
but the world forever stays.

Qoheleth's day had an important advantage over ours; they believed that "the world forever stays." But thanks to astonomers and physicists of the last few hundred years, we know that the planet we call home has only five billions years left before our beloved Sun expands into a red giant and fries its closest several planets, including Mercury, Venus, and Earth. 

I hope no one loses sleep over that, but its one more unsettling fact for an unsettled age. Everything passes, never to return, leaving us with memories and scars. And given our penchant for remembering selectively, neither is reliable or reassuring. 

Scientists tell us about our origins in the past but say nothing helpful about its meaning. And those with no religious imagination suppose a planet with intelligent, self-aware beings is only a fluke. That awareness too will, in its last moments, might agree with Qoheleth and Macbeth. For the cynical, life is nothing more than

...a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Hopeless story appeal to romantics. They get excited about love stories that end in death. They can boast of their perspicuity: "I knew it all along!"

But Christians are not romantics; our story doesn't end in tragedy. We put our faith in Salvation History, and track its course from Eden to Armageddon with innumerable divine revelations along the way. We are never alone; the Lord God goes with us, and especially with those who recognizes his presence. 

Even Herod the tetrarch knew the story of Elijah and other prophets, and saw Jesus' mysterious place within that story. But he could not greet the Lord's mission or purpose, it meant trouble for him. As a sycophant to Roman authority, which knew only power and nothing of God, the Son of God on earth meant nothing but disturbance, change, and Salvation History marching onward toward Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. 

In Roman 8, Saint Paul described our destiny, and it is grand:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.

For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God;

for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope

that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.