Eventide & Altar

This is the passage. If you have read Ecclesiastes at all, you have likely read this section more than once, and it reads differently now than it did the first time. Qoheleth describes old age without a single euphemism, in images that were already old when he wrote them and remain exactly accurate now: the guardians of the house tremble - the arms. The strong men are bent - the legs. The grinders are idle because they are few - the teeth. Those who look through the windows grow blind - the eyes. The doors to the street are shut, the sound of the mill grows low - hearing fading, appetite fading with it. One fears heights and perils in the street. The almond tree blooms white. The silver cord is snapped, the golden bowl is broken, the pitcher is shattered at the spring, the pulley falls into the well. And the dust returns to the earth as it once was, and the life breath returns to God who gave it.

Whatever your own body has already confirmed of that list, and however much of it still lies ahead, notice what Qoheleth does not do with any of it. He does not flinch from naming it plainly, and he does not treat it as the final word either. The whole passage is a before - before the evil days come, remember your Creator. The urgency in this text was never really about youth. It is about whatever time remains, however much or little that turns out to be, read backward from wherever you are standing right now.

Psalm 90 gives you the request that belongs on the other side of that honesty: teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart. Not more days. Not a reversal of the silver cord's fraying. Wisdom about the days that are actually left. And then, remarkably, after all that plain description of decline: fill us at daybreak with your kindness, that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days. The psalm does not contradict Ecclesiastes. It asks God for joy inside the very frailty Ecclesiastes just finished describing, not instead of it.

The Gospel today gives you Jesus, right after a moment when the crowds were amazed at everything he did, quietly telling his disciples what is actually coming: the Son of Man is to be handed over. They did not understand, and they were afraid to ask. There is no shame in that fear. Whatever in your own life still feels like something you are afraid to ask about directly - your own body, your own remaining time, the state of your own soul - today gives you permission to ask it anyway.

The Sorrowful Mysteries tonight. Offer a decade specifically for your own body, exactly as it is now, in thanksgiving for what it has carried you through and in trust for what it still has left to carry.

• For the grace to name our own decline honestly, the way Ecclesiastes does, without either denying it or being ruled by fear of it, we pray to the Lord.
• For the courage to ask directly about whatever we have been afraid to ask, we pray to the Lord.
• For all who have died, whose silver cord has already been loosed and whose life breath has already returned to the God who gave it, we pray to the Lord.

Read the passage from Ecclesiastes 12 slowly, once, out loud if you are able. Then say Psalm 90's request in your own words: teach me to number my days aright. Let that be the whole prayer tonight.