There is a time for everything
Among the many possible interpretations of the reading from Ecclesiastes which we hard I like two, namely that There is the right time for everything. Wisdom is about doing the right thing at the right time or refrain from doing the wrong thing at the right time. Virtue is appropriate time management. It is about the proper timing. Jesus waited for 30 years before starting his public ministry because the right time had not yet come. He often told his hearers that his time had not yet come, and when it had come, he also told them. In today's gospel we hear that after he had been praying in the presence of his disciples, he asked them who do people and they say he was. The right time had come for him to assess how much they had understood him and based on that understanding he revealed something more about his mission. "The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised."
A second interpretation is that in God's wise plan for us there is room in our life for the joyful and the sorrowful. Wisdom or virtue is the art of accepting both and folly is the attempt illicitly to maximize the joyful and minimize the sorrowful. Again, Jesus is our model. He tells the disciples the suffering that awaits him after which will come the glory. But they, acting like any of us, try to dissuade him from taking the sorrowful.
The first reading concludes with the statement: "[God] has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without man's ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done." In other words, when we comply with God's ordering of time by doing everything in its proper time, we are prepared for eternity, even though we cannot fully comprehend God's plan for us. We pray for wisdom to value and use well the time God has given us, and to accept both the joys and the crosses that he puts in our way for our sanctification.
