{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-4118","native_reference":{"book_number":250,"chapter_from":3,"chapter_to":3,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":6,"verse_to":6},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Didymus the Blind</b>: Before the good things were found (for example, the knowledge of truth), people were in ignorance. For them it was the time of losing. But this time was preceded by the time of seeking; for when some one seeks the good, the time has come to lose what in his case had been before the good. Likewise people lived according to the law before Christ's life on earth, and they looked for the letter. But when the \"Sun of righteousness\" rose and truth finally had come, the time also had come to lose the letter and to supersede it.This is how one can sometimes lose in a good way. The Savior in the Gospel says: \"Those who want to save their soul will lose it, and those who lose their soul will find it.\" One [can also] understand this as referring to martyrdom and to the time of persecution: Those who want to save their soul on the day of judgment and at the time of reward must lose it by offering themselves up to death; to lose the soul here means death, the dying for truth in martyrdom.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON Ecclesiastes 77:18</i></p><p><b>Gregory of Elvira</b>: Jerusalem, therefore, was abandoned \"like a booth in a vineyard\" because the guardian angels left it along with the Lord when Christ had suffered. A crop in the field is guarded by the Lord not for its own sake but only for the grain it yields, such that the stalk is permitted to be destroyed once its fruit is harvested. So also it was not principally for its own sake that Jerusalem was guarded temporarily, but on account of Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born according to the flesh within its borders. But when its fruit had been harvested, that is, the body of Christ, whence came the heavenly bread of life, then Jerusalem was abandoned like a field after the harvest, like a booth in a vineyard after its grapes had been gathered. This, then, is why it was said here in the divine Scriptures, \"There is a time for guarding and a time for casting aside,\" for there was a time when Jerusalem was guarded and a time when it was being cast aside.<br/><i>— EXPOSITION OF ECCLESIASTES, FRAGMENT 2</i></p><p><b>Gregory of Nyssa</b>: Do you want to learn, too, the right moment to seek the Lord? To put it briefly—all your life. In this case alone the one moment to pursue it is the whole state of life. For it is not at a fixed moment and an appointed time that it is good to seek the Lord, but never to cease from continual search—that is the real timeliness.</p><p><b>Gregory of Nyssa</b>: Do you wish to learn the opportune time for seeking the Lord? Let me briefly state that your entire life is the only time to carry this out. Seeking the Lord is not defined by limit or time; rather, the truly opportune time for this consists in never putting an end to our search.<br/><i>— HOMILIES ON Ecclesiastes 7</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: \"A time<br/>to acquire and a time to lose. A time to<br/>keep and a time to throw away. \"As is in many verses before the meaning is<br/>the same here too, which is apparent before and following this verse, in that<br/>he says: \"A time to destroy and a time to build. <br/>\" And then \"A<br/>time to rend and a time to mend. \"Just<br/>as the Synagogue is destroyed so that the Church can be built and schism is<br/>only brought about by the law so that the Gospels are unified, because each<br/>preacher has carried it out one by one, unifying from the law and the prophets<br/>the testimonies of the arrival of the Lord. <br/>And thus there was a time for seeking and guarding Israel, a time for<br/>losing and discarding it. Or perhaps in<br/>fact a time for seeking a nation in the tribes and a time for losing the people<br/>of the Jews. A time for guarding the<br/>believers of the nations and a time for dismissing the faithless from<br/>Israel. \"A time for silence and a time for<br/>speaking. \"I think that the<br/>Pythagoreans, whose discipline is to remain silent for five years and<br/>afterwards to speak to learned men, took the origin of their decree from<br/>this. Let us learn therefore and so<br/>remain silent first, so that afterwards we open our mouths only to speak. Let us be silent for a set period and depend<br/>on the utterances of our teacher. <br/>Nothing seems right to us unless we learn that after much silence we are<br/>made into teachers by our pupils. Now<br/>though instead of the world slipping day by day into a far worse situation, we<br/>teach in churches what we do not know. <br/>And if by composing words or at the bidding of the devil, who is the<br/>patron of madness, we have aroused the applause of the common people, then we<br/>think we understand, (contrary to our conscience), what it is we were able to<br/>dissuade others from. We do not learn all the arts without a teacher, only<br/>those which are so common and easy that they don't require a tutor.<br/><i>— Commentary on Ecclesiastes</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"9da3aab19b60470de0288c5112763a00e337f6b6f58fb278c13c41cf3b597bc9","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":4118,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"aa0ee997f9f285d40703cdc64fb6ca774823e860fbf79f44e31bcb522f39efb2","translator":null,"work":null}