Come, eat your bread in gladness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for your works have been pleasing to God. If we would interpret this text in its obvious and ordinary sense, it would be correct to call it a righteous exhortation, in which Ecclesiastes counsels us to embrace a simple way of life and to be led by doctrines which involve a genuine faith in God. Then we may eat our bread in gladness and drink our wine with a cheerful heart. We will not fall into slanderous speech nor be involved in anything devious; rather we should think that which is right, and, insofar as we can, we should help the poor and destitute with mercy and generosity, truly dedicated to those pursuits and good deeds which please God [ … ]

God is everywhere. He is immeasurably vast and yet everywhere he is close at hand, as he himself bears witness: I am a God close at hand, and not a God who is distant. It is not a God who is far away that we are seeking, since (if we deserve it) he is within us. For he lives in us as the soul lives in the body – if only we are healthy limbs of his, if we are dead to sin. Then indeed he lives within us, he who has said: And I will live in them and walk among them. If we are worthy for him to be in us then in truth he gives us life, makes us his living limbs. As Saint Paul says, In him we live and move and have our being [ … ]