Homily for Thursday, 25 September 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 1:2-11; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17bc; Luke 9:7-9

Do our lives; does our work have any significance? If we hear only the cynical words of Qoheleth in today’s first reading, the beginning of the Book of Ecclesiastes, it would seem that nothing we do, nor even our lives, have any significance. “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” Qoheleth says. “What profit” have we “from all the labor which [we toil] at under the sun”?

Would not many of us be inclined to agree with Qoheleth? Life is cyclical: birth; growing up; work; taxes; death… Does all this have any meaning? Perhaps atheists of our time would be proud that even Scripture questions whether our existence has any meaning. Would a loving, present, and merciful God allow this kind of meaningless existence?

But wait… Should Qoheleth’s questions be interpreted not literally but rhetorically? Perhaps what Qoheleth is saying is that, indeed, nothing matters, neither our lives nor our work nor even belief in God, if it is self-serving and not oriented toward serving others and God. Toward whom are our lives; our work; our faith; our worship oriented: God and others or ourselves? Are our lives; our work; our faith; our worship maybe oriented toward God and others sometimes and toward ourselves at other times? Our lives; our work; our faith; our worship are meaningless “vanity” if they are “all about me.” Our lives; our work; our faith; our worship are given meaning if they are all about God and about the people and the world we serve and love in God’s name.

On the one hand, our Gospel gives us the example of King Herod, for whom life was all about him. And so he is perplexed by Jesus; neither able to “see him” nor to “hear” accurately the truth about who Jesus is: the Christ; the Son of God.

On the other hand, perhaps many of us could identify with the writer of today’s Psalm. We at least try (if we are not often successful) at making our lives; our work; our faith; our worship all about God and the people we serve. Yet we recognize, as in our Psalm, that we cannot live a life of faith; we cannot worship properly; we cannot have any meaning beyond “vanity of vanities” without relationship with God. And so the writer of our Psalm prays and invites us to pray to God, “Prosper the work of our hands!”

Lord, “prosper the work of our hands for us”! You give meaning to our lives; our work; our service; our faith; our worship, which are not first about “me” but about you, O God, and the people and world we serve and love in your name.