Sirach 30:17-25: a reflection

17Death is better than a bitter life, and eternal rest than a continual sickness. 18Good things poured out upon a mouth that is closed are like food offerings laid upon a grave. 19What does an offering profit an idol? For it can’t eat or smell. So is he who is punished by the Lord, 20seeing with his eyes and groaning, like a eunuch embracing a virgin and groaning. 21Don’t give your soul to sorrow. Don’t afflict yourself deliberately. 22Gladness of heart is the life of a man. Cheerfulness of a man lengthens his days. 23Love your own soul, and comfort your heart. Remove sorrow far from you, for sorrow has destroyed many, and there is no profit in it. 24Envy and wrath shorten life. Anxiety brings old age before its time. 25Those who are cheerful and merry will benefit from their food.

This is practical wisdom about the heart, and it comes as gentle counsel: do not give your soul over to sorrow, and do not distress yourself deliberately. Gladness of heart, it says, is the very life of a person; cheerfulness lengthens one's days, while envy and anxiety wear life away and bring old age before its time. The sage is urging us not to hand ourselves needlessly to sorrow.

Read this gently, because it is not scolding those in real grief or telling anyone to simply cheer up. Some sorrow is not chosen and cannot be switched off, and this passage is not aimed at that. It is aimed at the sorrow and anxiety we take up and nurse without need, the envy we feed, the worry we rehearse, the distress we deliberately deepen. Those, the sage says, are worth releasing, because they quietly consume the life God gave you.

There is permission and wisdom here to guard your gladness as something precious. Not to fake a cheer you do not feel, but to stop handing your soul to the sorrows and anxieties you could set down, and to receive gladness of heart as a gift to protect rather than a luxury to feel guilty about. Where you have been deliberately distressing yourself, feeding worry or envy, hear the invitation to let it go. Comfort your heart; gladness is the life of a person, and God does not begrudge it to you.

Lord, I sometimes hand my soul to sorrows and anxieties I could set down, and they wear away the life you gave. Where my distress is chosen, help me release it. Teach me to guard gladness of heart as your gift, and comfort my heart in you.