Homily for Friday, 26 September 2014– Ferial

Friday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of Sts. Cosmas and Damian 

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11; Psalm 144:1b, 2abc, 3-4; Luke 9:18-22

This homily was given at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, Webster, NY.

Who is really in control of our lives; our world; creation? The easy answer to this question is that God is ultimately in control. Our first reading today from Ecclesiastes hints at this answer: “There is an appointed time for everything… [God] has made everything appropriate to its time… without [our] ever discovering… the work [that] God has done.”

But is it not foolish, indeed dangerous, for us to leave everything up to God’s control, when we are capable of shaping our relationships with one another, some events in our lives, in our communities, and even sometimes national and worldwide events?

There is “a time to be born and a time to die.” We have no control over birth and death. But do we not have some say in promoting peace or promoting or alleviating conflict in our interpersonal relationships; in our families; in our Church; even in our world? Are we not invited as Christians to love and not to hate; to care for one another and for God’s creation? And so why does Ecclesiastes allow for “a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace” when to love one another and, at least in part, to work toward peace is up to us? Is there ever “a time to hate”?

When I prepare with families for a funeral of a loved one, many choose this reading from Ecclesiastes as the first reading at the funeral. And yet often the short version of this reading, which leaves out “a time to hate,” is chosen. Clearly this phrase raises a fair objection. How can hatred be accepted as part of the way God has made us; made our world to be?

I think the answer to these kinds of questions is expressed toward the beginning and again toward end of our first reading today. Ecclesiastes says that, on the one hand, “there is an appointed time for everything.” On the other hand, God “has put the timeless into [our] hearts.” God has created time itself, and has also given us an awareness of “the timeless”; what we can control and influence and what we are invited to leave trustingly up to God are both God’s gift to us. Even more, the ability God has given to each and every one of us to discern the difference between what we influence and even have responsibility over and what is “timeless,” what is mystery, is God’s gift to us.

We have perhaps heard the so-called “Serenity Prayer” whose message is similar to that in our reading from Ecclesiastes: “God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Both the “Serenity Prayer” and our first reading today raise the question: Who is in control? Ultimately God is in control of our lives; our world; creation. God “has put the timeless into [our] hearts.” But God has also given us the gift of helping to shape his creation; to influence interpersonal, local, and more far-reaching relationships and events; a gift God has given to no other creature that we know.  This is our time to accept this role; this gift from God, with trust in God, balancing and discerning it along with the sense of mystery; of “the timeless,” a gift that God has also “put… into [our] hearts.”