Homilies on Ecclesiastes 5

Now from the great leader of the church comes our initiation into the loftier lessons. For having first cleansed our souls through the preceding words, and having removed every desire for what is vain that arises in human beings, he thus brings the mind to the truth, [having lifted] off the weight of vain things like a load from the shoulders. Let the church be instructed in this as a doctrine, having learned through the present teaching that the beginning of the virtuous life is to come to be outside vice. For the great David too, when he gives in the Psalms an introductory guidance toward the pure way of life, does not begin his account from the perfection of the things contemplated in blessedness. For he did not say first that blessed is the one who prospers in all things, who is like the tree, who is rooted beside the channels of the waters, who remains evergreen in good things, who gathers the fruits of life at the proper times; rather, he made the departure from evils the beginning of blessedness, since it is not possible to become good before washing off the filth of vice. So too, then, this great Ecclesiast first removes vain things by his discourse, so that, as with a sick body, [once the cause of the disease is removed] the good of health comes in. For this reason he ran through the account of vanity, saying that sense-perception is not a safe criterion of the beautiful; he brought into view the non-existence in what is pursued; he separated our desiring disposition from bodily enjoyment; and so he points out what is truly to be chosen, what is truly desirable, the pursuit of which is something active and substantial, remaining for ever with those who pursue it, [free] of all vanity.

“For I looked,” he says, “to see wisdom.” So that I might see exactly what was longed for, I first saw both distraction and folly. For contemplation of the things pursued becomes more exact by comparison with the opposite. And he names wisdom also “counsel,” saying, “Who is the man who will follow after counsel, in all that it has done?” He teaches, then, what human wisdom is: that it is to follow the true Wisdom, which he also names “counsel,” the maker of the things that truly are and subsist and are not contemplated in vanity. This is the sum of human wisdom; but the true Wisdom and Counsel is nothing else, in my view at least, than the Wisdom conceived before the universe. This is the one in whom God made all things, as the Prophet says: “You made all things in wisdom.” And Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, in whom all things came to be and were set in order. If, then, human wisdom is this, to come to understand the true works of the true Wisdom and Counsel — and the work of that Counsel or Wisdom, in my view, is incorruptibility, the blessedness of the soul, courage, righteousness, prudence, and every name and notion understood in terms of virtue — then perhaps by consistent sequence we are brought to the knowledge of the good things. “For since I saw these things,” he says, “and judged as in a balance [between what is and] what is not, so as to find the difference between wisdom and folly, such as would be found when light is examined against darkness.” And it seems to me that he fittingly used the example of light for the use of the good. For since darkness by its own nature is non-existent (for if there were not something blocking the sun’s ray, there would be no darkness), while light is something in itself, understood in its own being, he shows by the example that vice does not subsist of itself, but has a parasitic existence through the privation of the good; [whereas the] good always remains the same, abiding and fixed, and does not have a parasitic existence through any prior privation of anything. What is understood as the opposite of the good does not exist in essence; for what does not exist of itself is nothing at all; for vice is the privation of what is, and not an existence. The difference of light from darkness, then, is equal to that of wisdom from folly. For by a part he embraces the whole good under the name of wisdom, and with folly he interprets the whole nature of evil. But what gain is it to us to admire the good, unless some road to its possession is also shown by the teacher? Let us hear, then, from the one who teaches how we too can come to share in the beautiful. “The wise man’s eyes,” he says, “are in his head.” What does he mean by this? Is there any living creature at all that has its organs of sight outside its head, whether you mean one in the water, on land or in the air? For in all the eye is set in front of the rest of the body and seated in the head of those that have a head. How then does he speak here of the head of the wise man alone? Surely he hints by this that there is a certain analogy between the things contemplated in the soul and the parts of the body. And just as in the formation of the body the part that is foremost of the whole is named the head, so too in the soul the ruling and foremost part is understood as the head; and as we call the base of the foot the heel, so the base of the soul would be that by which it touches its union with the body, from which it sends the power and activity of perception into what lies beneath. When, then, the discerning and contemplative power of the soul is busied with the objects of sense, the nature of its eyes is moved to its heels, through which it sees what is below, remaining without sight of the lofty spectacles. But if, having recognized the vanity of what lies below, it should lift its eyes up to its own head, which is Christ, as Paul interprets, it would be blessed in its keenness of sight, having its eyes there where there is no darkening of evil. Paul the great, and any others great like him, had their eyes in the head, and so do all who live and move and have their being in Christ. As one who is in light cannot see darkness, so one who has his eye in Christ cannot gaze at anything vain. So the one who has his eyes in the head — and we understood the head as the beginning of all — has his eyes in every virtue (for Christ is the complete virtue): in truth, in righteousness, in incorruptibility, in every good. “The wise man’s eyes, then, are in his head; but the fool walks in darkness.” For the one who has not put his own lamp on the lampstand, but puts it under the base of the bed, has made the light darkness for himself, becoming the maker of the non-existent. And the non-existent is vain; darkness, then, is equal in meaning to the vain. The soul of the fool, then, having become body-loving and fleshly, in seeing these things sees nothing; for keen sight in these things is truly darkness. Do you see these sharp and nimble people in life, whom we call skilled in the law courts, how they make injustice easy for themselves — by witnesses, advocates, documents, courting of the judges — so as both to accomplish evil and to escape punishment? Who does not admire the shrewdness and versatility of such people? But nevertheless such people are blind, if they are examined against that eye which sees what is above, which is set in the head of all things; those who adorn their own heel, which is torn by the serpent’s teeth, are plainly blind. For by the things through which they see what is below they engrave the doctrines of sin on themselves. For he who loves injustice hates his own soul, and what is called blessed in them among human beings is more pitiable than any misfortune. And how many again, on the contrary, who are filled with the contests on high and are at leisure for the contemplation of what truly is, are thought to be blind and useless in material affairs, as Paul too boasts of being, saying that he is a fool for Christ’s sake. For his prudence and wisdom were busied with none of the things pursued here. Therefore he says, “We are fools for Christ’s sake”; as if he said, “We are blind to the life below, because we see what is above and have our eyes in the head.” For this reason he was without shelter and without a table, poor, a wanderer, naked, worn down by hunger and thirst. But consider what the one who was such below was like in the things above. For lifted up to the third heaven, where his head was, he had his eyes there, exulting in the unspeakable mysteries of paradise, seeing what is not seen, and delighting in all that is beyond sense and thought. And who would not have thought him pitiable, seeing him a prisoner, tormented with blows, in a shipwreck in the deep, carried along in his chains by the waves across the sea? Yet although his affairs among human beings were such, he was not turned away from always having his eyes in the head, saying: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ, which is in Christ Jesus? Affliction, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” — which is equal to saying, “Who will dig out my eyes from the head and move them to what is trodden underfoot and earthly?” And we too are commanded to do the same, in the instruction to set our minds on things above, which is like saying [to have our eyes] in the head. But if we have learned how the wise man’s eyes are in his head, let us flee folly, which becomes darkness for those who walk in this life. “For the fool,” he says, “walks in darkness.” And the fool, as the prophecy says, is the one who says in his heart that there is no God, who has become corrupt and abominable in his practices.

The sequence of the discourse, through what is said next, heals those who are small-minded in their attitude to this life, to whom death is thought something hard, and who for this reason believe that there is no gain in the virtuous life for those who pursue the loftier life, since for both the life ends in the same end, and there is no escape from death except through life. Making such objections as though in his own person, he again takes hold of the absurdity of those who put them forward, as having given no thought to the nature of what is, and he teaches the difference, in what virtue has the advantage over vice: that no equal honour is hoped for in them because death is common, but the difference is found through the good or evil things that await afterward. The wording of the objection is this: “I knew that one event will befall them all. And I said in my heart, As the event of the fool, so it will befall me too; and why then have I become exceedingly wise? I spoke in my heart, for the fool speaks out of abundance, that this too is vanity. For there is no memory of the wise man with the fool for ever, since already the days that are coming — all things were forgotten; and how will the wise man die with the fool?” To these he adds that he thought all things worthy of hatred about which he had earlier been passionately disposed, embracing the vain as good. And he says he hated all that he toiled at with a view to this life, because he toiled at nothing for himself, but at all for the one after him, who he cannot know beforehand, because of the uncertainty of the future, how he will use what has been toiled for. He says, word for word: “And I hated life, because the work done under the sun was evil to me, for all is vanity and a choice of spirit. And I hated all my toil at which I toil under the sun, because I leave it to the man who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool, and whether he will have power over all my toil at which I toiled and in which I became wise under the sun? This too is vanity.” Having said this, he says that he was also disposed with estrangement in his soul toward this: toward thinking that the portion is one for the one who has lived virtuously and for the one who has made no effort toward it. For he says that the toil of the one is in wisdom and knowledge and courage, and of the other in anger and pains, which come through his zeal about life. To bring these to equality with one another, he says, is not only vanity but also wickedness. And this wording is as follows: “And I turned to renounce in my heart all my toil at which I toiled under the sun; for there is a man whose toil is in wisdom and in knowledge and in courage, and a man who did not toil in it will be given his portion. This too is vanity and great wickedness. For what comes to the man in all his toil and in the choice of his heart, at which he toils under the sun? For all his days are of pains, and of anger is his distraction; even at night his heart does not sleep. This too is vanity.” Again he brings forward against himself another objection of those who judge the life of enjoyment preferable to the loftier life, and he overturns what is put forward, going through both in his own person, the solution and the objection. For the objection is that one should think nothing good except what one takes into oneself; and this is eating and drinking. The answer to it is that the things by which the human being is nourished and gladdened are not these, but wisdom and knowledge; so that to have zeal for these is good, but what is pursued through the flesh is a distraction of the soul and vanity. The words of the lofty teaching run thus: “There is nothing good for a man who will eat and drink and show his soul good in his toil. And this too I saw, that it is from the hand of God, what one will eat and drink apart from him. For to the man who is good before him he has given wisdom and knowledge and gladness, and to the one who sins he gave a distraction, to add and to gather, to give to the one who is good before the face of God. … This too is vanity and a choice of spirit.” The sense of what is written next, then, and the preliminary contemplation following the sequence, is this which we have now set out briefly. It would be time to take up the wording again and to fit the thoughts precisely to the words.

“And I knew, I too, that one event will befall them all, and I said, As the event of the fool, so it will befall me too, and why then did I become wise?” This is the objection that he puts to himself, saying: “If this event of death befalls both, and virtue does not exempt the one who has come to be in wisdom from sharing in death, my zeal for wisdom has come to be in vain.” And what is the passage’s answer to what was said? “I,” he says, “spoke this superfluously in my heart, for the fool speaks out of abundance. And this too is vanity: for there is no memory of the wise man with the fool for ever.” For he condemns this objection as having been brought in superfluously and inconsistently, and names folly the argument which brings forward nothing from the stores, nothing from the treasuries of wisdom, but is like an excrement of the mind; for like foam it speaks out of overflow. To use speech in this way is vain and to no further purpose, since the argument has zeal for nothing else than to persuade us not to look at what appears. For the objector makes his battle from what is seen; for death is among the things that appear. What, then, does he say? The judgment of the virtuous and the wicked life does not consist in this, as though only the wicked had to die in body while the good remained without experience of bodily death; [the objector] does not know in what the immortality of virtue consists, and what death is for those who live in vice. “Of the wise man,” he says, “the memory lives for ever, and extends through all the age; for the fool even the remembrance is extinguished.” For the Prophet too says of such people, “Their remembrance perished with a noise,” that is, conspicuously and manifestly; for this is what the addition of “noise” indicates. “There is no memory, then,” he says, “of the wise man with the fool for ever”; but the life of the wise man lasts through the ages by memory, whereas forgetfulness succeeds the fool. For in the days that are coming all that belongs to the fool comes to be in forgetfulness; so always saying, in the phrase “since already the days that are coming, all things [were forgotten]” … If, then, the wise man seeks wisdom, and the fool has vanished in the death of forgetfulness, how, he says, do you say that the wise man will die with the fool?

For this reason he is pained and ashamed at what he pursued for this life, and says that he hates all he pursued for this life, suffering much as if someone, having shamelessly gorged himself on drugged honey out of gluttony, should then perceive, as a bad humour [arose] in him from his greed, the drug mixed in, spitting it out together with the honey, and on this account should hate the honey by the memory of his disgust, because the fullness, through the drug, brought about the upheaval. For this reason, having filled himself, though not to satiety, with what is pursued for luxury, in the vomiting of confession, loathing and abhorring the shame at what he had done as if it were the quality of some poison, he cries out that he hates that life, saying thus, word for word: “And I hated life, because the work done under the sun was evil to me.” For I became evil, he says, not to anyone else, but to myself, by what I did under the sun. For nothing of what came to be has stood fast for me; all the things pursued were a fancy and an impulse of choice. “For all is vanity and a choice of spirit,” he says. And he says another thing: that zeal here deserves hatred because one toils not for oneself but for the one after him, whatever one happens to have worked at with zeal in this life — dockyards, harbours, the splendid and costly constructions of battlements and buildings, gateways and towers, the beauties of colonnades, monuments, and the works of love on the land, groves of every kind, the beauties of meadows, vineyards rivalling the seas in their breadth, and anything else of this kind. Whoever happens to have toiled at them toils, but the one who comes into life after him shares in them. And it is unclear whether he will not make the abundance a material for vice. For it is not for all to let their perception down into the experience of such things for the sake of knowledge. “This I,” he says, “did by wisdom. With authority, letting the impulse of nature, like a colt, leap a little after the passions below, I curbed it again with the rein of reason and brought it under its authority. Who knows,” he says, “whether that man too, whoever after us comes to be among these things, will have authority over the enjoyment, and will not rather be mastered by them, like some captive slave, under the power of pleasure?” Therefore, he says, “I hated all my toil at which I toil under the sun, because I leave it to the man who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool, and whether he will have power over all my toil at which I toiled and became wise under the sun?” For I think this is the meaning of this saying: that he did not slip into the life of enjoyment through passion, but came to it by a certain reasoning of wisdom, making his participation in it with authority, and not being himself mastered by this power. “Who, then, knows,” he says, “whether the one after me will not be mastered by these things, at which I toiled not through passion but by wisdom?” For by naming luxury “toil” he shows that he accepted participation in pleasure under constraint, like some contest hard to win. “And let this too,” he says, “be counted among the vain things.” And he says that his soul renounced something else of the things here, and makes clear by his words what he means. For he is set against the one who fails in right judgment, because, seeing clearly the difference between the opposite lives — of which the one toils at virtue and brings down its desire to nothing human, while the other, conversely, endures none of the toil of the virtuous, but is worn out only in bodily toils — when someone gives the vote for the beautiful to the latter, overlooking the one who excels in wisdom, he declares this unjust judgment not only vain but also wicked. He says in these words: “And I turned,” he says, “to renounce my heart in regard to the other toil at which I toiled under the sun.” What, then, is it that I renounced? “That there is a man whose toil is in wisdom and in knowledge and in courage,” and another man who has toiled at nothing in such things. How then will someone add the portion of preference to such a one? “And a man,” he says, “who toiled in it” — that is, in the good — “will be given his portion,” instead of “will define such a life as belonging to the lot of the good.” “But this,” he says, “is vanity and great wickedness.” For how is it not great wickedness, when he knows the zeal and choice that lies in the human being about toils? For this is what he says: “He knows for the man, in all his toil and in the choice of his heart, at which he himself toils under the sun.” What, then, does he know? “That all his days,” he says, “are of pains, and of anger is his distraction; even at night his heart does not sleep.” For in truth for those who busy their souls with this temptation life is painful, lashing the heart as with goads by the desires for more; and zeal for greed is painful, not so much gladdened by what it has as pained by what it lacks; their labour is divided between night and day, working correspondingly through each of them, the day being spent in toils, and the night sending sleep away from the eyes. For the cares of gain knock sleep away. Then how does one who looks at these things not condemn the vanity of this zeal? Therefore he adds to what has been said, “This too is vanity.” Again he takes hold of another objection; … is this: “If you count what is outside us among the vain things, what we take into ourselves would not reasonably be condemned as vain. But eating and drinking take place in ourselves. Such a thing, then, is not among the things to be rejected, but one would define such a grace as a divine benefaction.” This is the sense of the objection; and the words run thus: “There is nothing good,” he says, “in a man, except what he will eat and drink, and show his soul good in his toil. And this too I saw, that it is from the hand of God, that one will drink apart from him.” These things the advocate of gluttony objects to the teacher. But that the guide of wisdom says to this, “to the man who is good” — the addition of “good” surely showed the distinction of the beautiful and the worse, through what we have now learned, so that what is understood as the opposite of goodness is clear. To the man, then — not to the beast, nor to one bent down over his belly, possessing a gullet instead of reason, but to the good man who lives according to the image of the only Good — God did not legislate this luxury after which the cattle-like nature gapes; but he gave him, it says, instead of food, wisdom and knowledge and gladness. For how could anyone increase in goodness through the foods of the belly? “Man shall not live by bread alone.” This is the word of the true Word. Virtue is not nourished by bread; the power of the soul does not thrive and grow fat on meats. The lofty life is nourished and grows strong on other foods. The food of the good man is self-control, his bread is wisdom, his relish righteousness, his drink freedom from passion, his pleasure not that of the body, such as the disposition toward what one desires, but that whose name and work is gladness; for this reason too he named with this title the disposition that arises in the soul toward the beautiful, because such a state comes from right-mindedness. We must learn here too, then, what we have also heard from the Apostle: that the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and freedom from passion and blessedness. [What] is pursued by human beings for the sake of bodily enjoyment is the zeal of sinners and a distraction of the soul, dragged down from the things above to the things below, whose whole span of life in this world is spent in zeal to add and to gather. So the one who judges this good before the face of God does not know that he is defining the good in what is vain. These things I have said in my own voice; but the setting out of the divine words will put the seal on this sense. For it says: “To the sinner he gave a distraction, to add and to gather, to give to the one who is good before the face of God. For this too is vanity and a choice of spirit.” As much as … from this side-by-side examination of the reading, may it become for us a help toward fleeing what has been condemned, and a provision for what is achieved toward the better …