Daily Reflection Friday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

I’ve been writing these reflections for some time now on Friday’s and the readings have cycled to repeat themselves. Therefore, having already written on today’s gospel passage more than once before (!), I shall, instead, comment on the first reading from the Book of Sirach. Sirach, also known as The Wisdom of Sirach or Ecclesiasticus (its old Catholic title meaning “of the Church” and not to be confused with Ecclesiastes), is the longest of the so-called Wisdom literature and is among what are known as the Apocrypha which were works either originally written in Greek, not Hebrew, or were written later than the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament. They are not recognized as canonical in Judaism or Protestantism. Other Apocryphal works include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom and Maccabees, all of which are regarded as canonical by the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Sirach most closely resembles, if anything, the Book of Proverbs.

Here, late in Sirach, chapter 44, the author praises the “Godly” or holy ancestors who have gone before us, many great people that he describes in the verses 2-8 that were left out of today’s reading. Some were famous, but for most of them, he says, “There is no memory, for when they ceased, they ceased. And they are as though they had not lived.” That is actually a very profound spiritual truth. Think of yourself, and all you are involved in, all who you know, all you’ve done or accomplished, your whole history. There is a popular saying that goes, “I may not be much, but I’m all I think about!” So much in our lives can seem so important to us so often and, like Martha, Jesus’ beloved friend, we are anxious and worried about many things. Yet the unmitigated fact of human life is that for the overwhelming majority of us, within one hundred years after our deaths, no one alive will ever know who we were. Oh, we may survive as a name in a record or on our tombstone, but eventually, even those mere tokens of our existence will also vanish.

Does that leave you feeling wistful or melancholy? Maybe even a bit depressed? Nevertheless, it is utterly true. Of the billions who have died before the twentieth century, almost all of them are completely, totally unknown to us today. It is, as Sirach rightly points out, as though they had not lived. Yet every one of those human lives had importance, certainly to their families and friends and, most of all, to God. As Wisdom (another apocryphal work) 3:1 says, “The souls of the just are in the hands of God.”

As Jesus also said to Martha, “Only one thing is necessary.” It should humble us to reflect on these things, not depress us. All those things we take so seriously and spend so much energy on, what of it all will matter ultimately? St. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote the great Summa Theologica (some 52 hundred pages) as well as other extensive writings (the man must have spent most of his life writing), is, incredibly, said to have said of them (after a vision he had late in life), “It is all straw!” As Jesus told us, “What does it profit someone to gain the whole world and lose their soul?”

God will never forget us and will keep all our memories forever. In the fulness of the Kingdom, when God is “all in all,” we shall all share our life stories with one another. We shall walk with everyone who ever lived and share completely in their memories and their past lives. We will have all eternity to do so. And we shall come to see how God walked with us throughout it all, how God united us in everything, and we shall rejoice in one another and in God’s love for us and God’s saving us all in Christ to finally fully experience the one thing necessary that God has been pouring out on us all this while.