Reflection - Pessimism

By Steve Hall

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092422.cfm
Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:8
Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 & 17
Luke 9:43-45

There is an unsettling consistency in the two readings for the day. The opening message comes from Qoheleth, the master of pessimism, the author of the famous phrase which we also hear in today’s readings: “ Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity.” Yet we do him a disservice in casting him as a simple pessimist. His truth may be uncomfortable, but, nevertheless, it is the truth. In the end “the dust returns to the earth as it once was, and the life breath returns to God who gave it.”

Our second reading comes from Luke’s Gospel where Jesus predicts his soon-to-come passion to which Matthew and Mark also append a prediction of the Resurrection. As I read the two passages, particularly that from the Gospel, my mind turned to the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. I couldn’t help but hear Jesus prayer in Gethsemane echoing the sentiments of Qoheleth:

Listen, surely I've exceeded expectations,
Tried for three years, seems like thirty.
Could you ask as much from any other man?

Can you show me now that I would not be killed in vain?
Show me just a little of your omnipresent brain.
Show me there's a reason for your wanting me to die.

From Gethsemane (I Only Want To Say) lyrics
(Jesus Christ Superstar - Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice - 2018)

A sense of futility is never a comfortable one. It’s discouraging. It’s disheartening. It could even lead us to despair. We seek a way out. Somewhere, somehow there must be meaning and purpose to what happens. Qoheleth offers little to nothing, at least in this passage, to provide for what dismay might follow from his unwelcome truth. Neither do the brief two verses from Luke. (If we had heard the parallel passages from Matthew and Mark we would at least have heard of the Resurrection.) I suspect that this is why the Church gave us hope through the verses of the Psalm.

It is not difficult to find circumstances or incidents that are discouraging. After all, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ so bad deeds will obviously be punished as well. With such thoughts we leave any hint of promise stuffed in a drawer or hidden in the attic of our minds. 

Like the two readings, the Psalm, too, can appear pessimistic. You turn man back to dust, saying, “Return, O children of men.” “They are like the changing grass, which at dawn springs up anew, but by evening wilts and fades.” But there is more to the picture than these depressing lines teach. We are directed to turn to where our true hope lies.

“Fill us at daybreak with your kindness,
that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days.
And may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours.
In every age, O God, you have been our refuge.”
(Psalm 90: 14-17)