Daily Mass Homily: Friday, September 28th, 2012

            We have a well known Scripture passage from Qoheleth this morning from Ecclesiastes.  It was actually made into a song…Mama’s and Papa’s, I believe?  [Many shake their heads.]  Who sang this then?  [Many say, “The Byrds”.]  Well, I apologize, I am very young and shouldn’t know that one anyway!

            “The teacher” captures the human experience of contradictions.  There is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to love and a time to hate, a time to be at war and a time to be at peace.  I’m not sure what “a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together” means, but the point is the same…life is balanced with such contradictions.

            This applies not only to our individual lives, but also to salvation history as a whole.  We can say, “There was a time before Christ, there is a time after Christ.  There is a time before the Resurrection, there is a time after the Resurrection.”  God, in His providence, has a time for everything.  This includes both the preparation stages in the Old Testament Law and prophets for Christ and the fulfillment of Christ’s incarnation.

            We have a blessed vantage point in that we get to live after the Resurrection.  Because of this we can exclaim with the Psalmist, “Blessed be the Lord, my rock!”