Homilies on Ecclesiastes 1 part 4/8

That, then, which contributes nothing useful either to beauty, or to bodily well-being, or to the consolation of pains, for those who pursue it eagerly — for the sake of what is it pursued? And what is the disposition of those whose heart has melted with longing for the material, when they happen to be conscious of possessing such a thing? As having gained what greater good do they exult in themselves? If, indeed, someone were to ask them whether they would consent to have their nature exchanged for that thing, and themselves to become that which has been honored by them with such regard, would they choose the change — that their nature should pass from man into gold, and they be shown no longer rational and possessed of understanding, and employing their senses for life, but pallid and heavy and voiceless, soulless and insensate, such as the nature of gold is? I do not think they would choose this — not even those utterly melted with desire for the material.

If then, to those who think rightly, it is a kind of curse to come to be in the very properties of soulless matter, what is this irrational madness concerning the acquisition of such things, whose end is vanity — that men grown rabid over money should dare even murder and robbery because of it? And not these alone, but also the wicked device of interest, which, should someone name it another kind of robbery and bloodguilt, would not miss the mark.

For what difference is there between plundering another's goods secretly by breaking into his house, and making oneself master of what belongs to the passer-by through his murder, and acquiring what does not belong to one through the compulsion of interest? O evil name!

Interest becomes a name for robbery.

O wicked coupling, which nature never recognized, but the disease of the money-lovers has newly devised among things soulless!

O grievous conceptions, from which such interest is brought forth!

Only among existing things has that which is animate been distinguished by the difference of male and female.

To these God who formed them said, 'Increase and multiply,' so that, through generation from one another, that which is given life might increase into a multitude.

'He travailed with injustice, conceived toil, and brought forth iniquity.'

This is that interest which greed travailed to conceive; iniquity gives birth to it, and inhumanity serves as midwife.

For the one who always hides his wealth, and by oath assures that he has nothing, when he sees someone being throttled by necessity, then shows himself pregnant with his purse, then travails to bring forth the wicked interest of avarice, holding out beforehand to the unfortunate man the hope of a loan — that he may lay fuel upon his misfortune, just as one who would quench a flame with oil.

For he did not heal the loss by the loan, but rather increased it.

And just as in droughts the fields spontaneously bear thorns, so too, in the misfortunes of those hard-pressed, the interest of the greedy grows wild and rank.

Then he extends his hand together with the money, just as the fishing-line extends the hidden hook with the bait; and the wretched man, gaping wide at the present relief, together with the dragging of the hook vomits up whatever hidden thing he had stored away in secret.

Such are the benefactions of interest.

And if someone by force takes away another's provisions, or steals them secretly, he is called a violent man and a thief and the like; but the one who makes his injustice public through contracts, and makes his bitterness attested by witnesses, and confirms his lawlessness by covenants, is addressed as a lover of mankind, and a benefactor, and a saviour, and by every good name there is.

And gain by theft is called stealing, but the one who, through such compulsion, strips the debtor bare gives his bitterness the pet-name of philanthropy.

For thus do they name the losses of the wretched.

'I gathered for myself both silver and gold.'

But for this very reason, he who wisely instructs our life numbered these things too among the catalogue of confessions, so that men, learning from one who had condemned it by experience that this is one of the things condemned as absurd, might guard themselves against the assault of evil before their own experience — just as it is possible to pass unharmed through places infested with robbers and wild beasts, by learning beforehand from those who had run into danger there.

And well does the divine apostle define the passion of avarice, declaring it to be the root of all evils.

For just as, if a corrupted and putrid humor should flow into some part of the body and inflammation arises in that place, it is altogether necessary that the fluid which has settled there should break forth into some abscess and corruption, the pus eating through the surface — so too, in those into whom the disease of avarice has flowed in, the passion has, for the most part, broken out into licentiousness.

For this reason he adds, to the abundance of gold and silver, the shamefulness that consequently follows upon the disease that had previously taken hold.

'For I made,' he says, 'male singers and female singers, the delights of banquets, male cupbearers and female cupbearers.'

The mere mention of these names sufficed to expose publicly the passion which the disease concerning money had already prepared the way for.

O this absurd artfulness!

How suddenly it unleashes the flood of pleasures, inundating souls as if by twin torrents through hearing and sight, so that the evil might both be seen and be heard!

The song overthrows the hearing; the spectacle vanquishes the sight.

From the one side, the effeminate strain, through the dissolute harmony of the songs, brings the passions along with itself into the heart; from the other, the spectacle, like some engine of war falling upon the eyes of one already undone by the songs, overthrows the soul.

And the general of this battle-array is wine — like some wicked archer shooting a man down with twin arrows, aiming the barbs of pleasure at both hearing and sight.

For the song becomes an arrow for the hearing, and the spectacle for the sight.

For 'cupbearers' is not a bare name; rather, the appellation arises entirely from the deed.

...such pursuits? For as to how he who makes pleasure the aim of everything done, and, through excessive elaboration, passes over what is truly needful, will adorn the women who make the music for the song, and what manner of robe he will array upon the female cupbearers — of such things it is better to remain silent, and not to probe deeply in speech into the description of them, lest, through the very accusation itself, the memory should scrape open the wounds for those more given to passion.

For the sake of these things is the gold, and for the sake of these the silver, that it might furnish such baits of luxury.

Or is it for this reason that the passion of pleasure is called a serpent by Scripture — whose nature is such that, if its head should slip through a chink in the wall, it draws along after it the whole trailing coil?

What do I mean by this? Nature makes housing a necessity for men; but pleasure, slipping through this need into the very framework of the soul, has diverted the need into some immoderate extravagance of adornment, and has transformed the whole pursuit.

Then the beast — pleasure — creeps onward toward vineyards, and pools, and parks, and the adornments of gardens.

After this it crests itself with arrogance, and coils about with conceit, having yoked to itself dominion over one's own kin.

Upon these it drags along the coil of avarice, upon which licentiousness necessarily follows — the last and tail-most part of this bestial course of pleasure.

But just as it is not possible to draw a serpent up by its tail, since the roughness of its scales, by nature, resists in the opposite direction against those who would pull it, so it is not possible, beginning from the last parts, to expel the creeping thing of pleasure from the soul, unless one first shuts off the very first entrance to the evil.

For this reason the guide of virtue commands us to watch its head, calling by 'head' the beginning of vice, which, if not admitted, renders all that remains powerless to act.

For the one who has set himself wholly at war with pleasure would not be carried away by the particular assaults of the passion; but the one who admits the beginning of the passion has, along with it, admitted the whole beast within himself.

For this reason, having gone through all these things, he who lays bare such passions in public gathers his discourse together under a single heading.

For having said at the outset, 'I magnified my work,' he now adds, after the detailed exposition of what had come to pass, 'I was magnified' — showing that his knowledge of these opposing things did not come about through anything small, but that his experience advanced to the very utmost degree, so that no memory of like things among those who had lived before him possessed anything equal to it.

For he says, 'I was magnified, and I increased beyond all who were before me in Jerusalem' — and now he has revealed the purpose for which, having first been trained in all wisdom, he descended into the experience of such things.

'For my wisdom,' he says, 'stood by me.'

And by what has been said he signifies that, through wisdom, he had searched out every device for enjoyment, and that his understanding stood firm at the very summit of what could be found among these things.

For sight cooperated with desire, and free choice, through the pleasure of what was seen, was gorged full with whatever was after its own heart.

So that nothing was left over of the things devised for enjoyment, but there came to be for me, as a portion of possession, participation in the things of pleasure.

Which seems to me to signify nothing other than that he encompassed within himself every device for enjoyment, reaping gladness, as it were from some possession, out of the things that came to be.

'For I did not withhold,' he says, 'my heart from any gladness, and my heart rejoiced in all my toil, and this became my portion from all my toil' — calling possession a 'portion.'

...bringing forward the design of the things which he says he had enjoyed through every sense — the eyes finding what led to pleasure, and the soul possessing everything according to desire without hindrance.

Then he interprets the first utterance which he had made in the prologue of the discourse, declaring that all things are vain.

For he says that, looking toward these things, he declared concerning human life that 'All is vanity' — as many things as sense perceives, and as men contrive for the sake of gladness.

'For I looked upon all my works, which my hands had made, and upon all my toil, wherein I had toiled to accomplish them, and behold, all is vanity and a choice of spirit, and there is no advantage under the sun.'

For every power and activity of the senses has as its boundary the life under the sun; but to pass beyond this, and come into contemplation of the goods that lie above, the sensible nature is unable.

Having therefore examined all these things and the like, he instructs our life not to be disposed with admiration toward any of the things here — wealth, ambition, dominion over one's subjects, delights and luxuries and banquets, and whatever else is reckoned among things held in honor — but to see that the one end of all such things is vanity, whose surplus is not to be found for what comes after.

For just as those who write upon water perform the writing with their hand, tracing the shapes of the letters in the fluid, yet none of the markings remains in its form, but the effort of writing exists only in the very act of writing itself;

for the surface of the water ever follows close upon the hand, smoothing away what has just been traced;

so too does all the effort and activity of enjoyment vanish away within the very things that come to be.

For once the activity ceases, the enjoyment too is wiped away, and nothing is stored up for what follows, nor is any trace or remnant of gladness left behind for those who took pleasure, once the activity of pleasure has passed.

This is what the text signifies when it says, 'There is no advantage under the sun' for those who labor at such things, whose end is vanity.

From which may we also be delivered, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever.

HOMILY V. Now for us, from the great leader of the church, there comes an initiation into the more sublime of the teachings.

For having first purified our souls through the preceding discourses, and having removed them from all the desire for the vain that arises in men, he thus leads the mind toward the truth, having shaken off, as it were, some burden from the shoulders — the heavy weight of vain things.

And let the church be instructed in this as in a doctrine, learning through the present teaching that the beginning of a life according to virtue is to come to be outside of vice.

For he did not say, in the first place, that blessed is the one who prospers in all things, who is likened to the tree, who is rooted by the outlets of waters, who remains ever-flourishing among good things, who gathers in due season the fruit of his own life; but he made the departure from evils the beginning of blessing, since it is not possible to become good in any other way, before washing away the filth of vice.

So then, this great Ecclesiast likewise first removes vain things by his argument, so that, just as when a sick body has had its disease cleared away by the fitting treatments, the good of health comes about of itself.

For this reason he ran through the discourse of vanity, saying that sense-perception is not a secure criterion of the good; he set before our sight the non-existence lodged in the things men eagerly pursue; he separated our desiring disposition from bodily enjoyment.

The truly choiceworthy, the truly desirable, is that whose pursuit is a thing active and really subsisting, abiding forever with those who pursue it, separated from every notion belonging to vanity.

"For I applied myself," he says, "to see wisdom."

And that I might accurately behold what was desired, I first beheld also the derangement and the folly.

For from comparison with its opposite, the contemplation of the things pursued becomes more precise.

And he names wisdom also "counsel," saying:

"For what man is there who will follow after the counsel, in all that it has done?" He therefore teaches what human wisdom is: that to follow after the wisdom that truly is—which he also calls "counsel," productive of the things that truly exist and subsist and are not contemplated in vanity—this is the sum of human wisdom.

But the wisdom that truly is, and the counsel, is nothing other, at least according to my own reasoning, than the wisdom conceived before the whole universe.

And this is that in which 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 into being and were set in order.

If then this is human wisdom—to come to be within the careful contemplation of the true works of the wisdom and counsel that truly are—and if the work of that counsel, or rather of that wisdom, is, according to my own reasoning, incorruption, and the blessedness of the soul, and courage, and righteousness, and prudence, and every name and thought conceived according to virtue, then perhaps it is by consequence, through the knowledge of these good things, that we are led forward to them.

"For since I saw these things," he says, "and, as it were on a balance, distinguished being from non-being, I found the difference between wisdom and folly to be such as would be found between light examined against darkness."

And it seems to me that he fittingly used the example drawn from light for the judgment of the good.

For since darkness by its own nature does not subsist (for if there were nothing obstructing the sun's ray, there would be no darkness), while light itself exists in itself, understood in its own being—he shows by this example that evil does not subsist by itself, but subsists alongside through the privation of the good, whereas the good always remains the same, abiding and fixed, and does not subsist alongside through any prior privation of anything.

But that which is conceived as the opposite of the good does not exist according to essence.

For that which does not exist in itself, does not exist at all.

For evil is a privation of being, and not a subsistence.

Equal, then, is the difference between light and darkness, and between wisdom and folly.

For in part he comprehends the whole of the good under the name of wisdom, and by folly he signifies together the whole nature of evil.

But what profit is it to us to marvel at the good, unless some approach to its acquisition also be shown by the teacher? How, then, it is possible for us also to come into participation of the good—let us hear the teacher.

"The eyes of the wise man," he says, "are in his head."

What does this mean? Is there any animal whatsoever that has the organs of sight outside its head—whether you speak of a water creature, a land creature, or a creature of the air? For in all of them the eye is set forward before the rest of the body and is established in the head of those creatures possessing a head.

How then does he say here that only the wise man has his head furnished with eyes? Or does this altogether hint at, by this saying, that there is a certain analogy between what is contemplated in the soul and the parts of the body? And just as, in bodily formation, that part which is foremost of the whole is called the head, so also in the soul the ruling and foremost part is understood in place of the head.

And in the way that we call the base of the foot the "heel," so there might also be, as it were, a certain "base" of the soul, by which it is joined to its natural union with the body, and from which it sends the power and activity of sense-perception into that which underlies it.

Whenever, then, the discerning and contemplative power of the soul occupies itself with sensible things, the nature of its eyes is transferred down into its heels, by which it looks at the things below, remaining without any view of the lofty sights.

The head—which is Christ, as Paul interprets—would be blessed indeed in its keenness of sight, having its eyes there, where there is no overshadowing of evil.

The great Paul, and any others great like him, had their eyes in the head, as did all who live and move and have their being in Christ.

For just as it is not possible for one who is in the light to see darkness, so it is not possible for one who has his eye in Christ to gaze intently upon any of the vain things.

He, then, who has his eyes in the head—and we have understood the head to be the beginning of the whole—has his eyes in every virtue (for Christ is virtue entire), in truth, in righteousness, in incorruption, in every good thing.

"The eyes of the wise man, then, are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness."

For he who does not set forth his own lamp upon the lampstand, but instead thrusts its light under the base of the bed, has made darkness for himself, becoming the maker of that which does not exist.

Equal, then, in what it signifies, is darkness with vanity.

The soul of the fool, then, having become body-loving and fleshly, in looking at these things sees nothing.

For truly, keenness of sight in these things is darkness.

Do you see these sharp and cunning people in life, whom we call litigious, how by contrivance they make injustice easy for themselves, through witnesses, advocates, documents, and the currying favor of judges, so as both to accomplish evil and escape its punishment? Who does not marvel at the shrewdness and conspicuousness of such men? Yet nonetheless these are blind, if they be examined in comparison with that eye which looks upon the things above, which is set in the head of the things that exist.

Blind indeed are those who adorn their own heel—the very heel that is being torn by the serpent's teeth.

For through the very means by which they see the things below, they carve into themselves the bites of sin.

"For he who loves injustice hates his own soul"; and that which is called blessed among them by men is more pitiable than every misfortune.

But how many, on the contrary, filled with the goods that are on high, and devoting their leisure to the contemplation of the things that truly are, are reckoned by some to be blind in material matters and senseless—such as Paul also boasts himself to be, saying that he is a fool for Christ's sake.

For his prudence and his wisdom had no concern for anything pursued here below.

"We are fools for Christ's sake"—as if he were saying:

We are blind to the life below, because we look to the things above and have our eyes in the head.

For this reason he was without shelter and without table, poor, a wanderer, naked, worn out with hunger and thirst.

But such as he was below, consider what he was in the things above.

For having been raised up even to the third heaven, where his head was, there he had his eyes, exulting in the unutterable mysteries of paradise, beholding the things unseen and delighting in those things which are beyond sense-perception and understanding.

Who would not have thought him pitiable, seeing him a prisoner, outraged by blows, and, shipwrecked in the deep, carried about upon the sea by the waves together with his chains? Yet nonetheless, even though his circumstances among men were such as these, he was not turned away from having his eyes always in the head, saying, "Who shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?"—which is equal to saying:

Who shall gouge out my eyes from my head, and transfer them to that which is trodden underfoot and earthly? And this is what is also enjoined upon us—to do the same—in the command to "mind the things above," which is the same as saying, to have our eyes in the head.

But if we have learned how the eyes of the wise man 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 is, as the prophecy says, "he who says in his heart, 'There is no God,'" who has become corrupt and abominable in his practices.

...disposed in such a way that death is reckoned to be something grievous, and for this reason it is believed that there is no profit in a life according to virtue for those who pursue the loftier life, since for both alike life comes to the very same end, and there is no escaping death by having lived a more excellent life.

Bringing forward such objections, then, as though from that person's own character, he again attacks the absurdity of those who put these things forward, as men who consider the nature of what exists without due reflection; and he teaches wherein the difference lies, in what respect virtue has the advantage over vice—namely, that it is not through the commonality of death that any equality of honor is to be hoped for between them, but that the difference is found through the good things or evil things awaiting them afterward.

And the wording of the objection runs thus:

"I knew that one fate would befall them all."

"And I said in my heart, 'As is the fate of the fool, so it will also befall me; and why then have I become wise?' I spoke abundantly in my heart, for the fool speaks out of abundance—for this too is vanity."

"For there is no remembrance of the wise man together with the fool forever, since already, in the days that are coming, all things will have been forgotten;"

"and how shall the wise man die along with the fool?" Upon which he adds that all things ought to be considered worthy of hatred—the very things toward which he formerly had a passionate attachment, embracing vanity as though it were good—and he says he has hated all the things he toiled at, looking toward this life, because he toiled for nothing that was his own, but everything for the one who comes after him, who—since it is not possible to foreknow, on account of the uncertainty of the future, what use he will make of the things toiled for—

And he speaks in these very words as follows:

"And I hated all life, because the work that was done under the sun was evil in my sight; for all is vanity and a striving after wind."

"And I hated all my labor, at which I labor under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who comes after me;"

"and who knows whether he will be wise or foolish? Yet he will have mastery over all my labor at which I have labored and been wise under the sun. This too is vanity."

Having said these things, he says that his soul was disposed strangely toward this too—the notion that the portion is one and the same for the one who has lived according to virtue and for the one who has made no effort at all toward it.

For to the one, he says, the labor consists in wisdom and knowledge and courage; but to the other, in anguish and in the pains that come from anxiety about life.

To bring these two, then, to an equal level with one another, he says, is not only vanity but also wickedness.

And this passage also runs thus:

"And I turned to renounce in my heart all my labor at which I toiled under the sun, because there is a man whose labor is in wisdom and in knowledge and in courage, and yet he must give his portion to a man who did not toil for it."

"This too is vanity and a great wickedness."

"For it is made known to man, in all his labor and in the purpose of his heart wherein he himself toils under the sun, that all his days are full of pains, and his anxiety is distraction, and even at night his heart does not rest."

Again, he brings forward another counter-argument, on behalf of those who judge the life of enjoyment preferable to the loftier life, presenting it himself against himself and then overturning what has been presented, setting forth both sides in his own person—both the objection and its resolution.

For the objection set against it is this: that one ought to think nothing good except what a man takes into himself, and this is eating and drinking; but the reply to this is that these are not the things by which man is nourished and made glad, but rather wisdom and knowledge.

That this indeed is good — to have zeal for these things — but that which is pursued through the flesh is a distraction of the soul and vanity.

But the words of the lofty teaching run in this manner:

“There is no good in man, which he will eat and drink, and will show his soul good in his toil;

to the sinner he has given distraction, to add and to gather, that he may give it to the one who is good before the face of God;

for indeed this too is vanity and a preference of spirit.”

This, then, is the sense of what is written next, and the preliminary survey following the sequence, which we have now briefly set forth.

It would now be the time again to take up the text and fit the thoughts precisely to the words.

“And I too knew that one and the same event will befall them all;

and I said, as the event of the fool, so also will it befall me — and why then have I become wise?” This is the objection which he himself raises against himself, saying:

If death’s encounter is one and the same for both, and virtue does not exempt the one who has attained wisdom from participation in death, then my zeal for wisdom has proved vain for me.

But what is the response of the discourse to what has been said? “I,” he says, “have spoken this to excess in my heart, because the fool speaks out of excess — for this too is vanity.”

“For there is no remembrance of the wise together with the fool forever.”

For he condemns this as superfluous and inconsequent, this counter-argument having been brought forward, and he calls the statement foolish, since it is not among things stored away, nor is it brought forth from within, out of the storehouses of wisdom, but is, as it were, a residue of the understanding, spat out like foam.

“For the fool,” he says, “speaks out of excess”; and to use speech in this way is vain and profits nothing further, since the discourse aims at nothing else than to persuade one not to look toward the things that appear.

The one who raises the objection wages his battle from the things that are seen;

for death too belongs among the things that appear;