Word to the Wise
Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - Monday in the 26th Week in Ordinary Time
[Job 1:6-22 and Luke 9:46-50]"Perish the day on which I was born, the night when they said, 'The child is a boy!' Why did I not perish at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?" [Job]
This week we are presented with the Book of Job. The feast of the archangels yesterday pre-empted the scene-setting in which God dialogues with Satan and allows Satan to "test" Job. Job is subjected to the total loss of family and property and is then afflicted from head to foot with terrible sores. In other words, he has come to complete physical abjection! To add to his suffering, three friends [plus another who shows up later] come and sit with him and tell him why THEY think he is suffering. Mostly they think he must have done something wrong for which God is punishing him. All this does is to add to his suffering! Today's passage is Job's first speech after all this has happened to him.
While Job has lost family, property and health, he has not lost his emotions and they pour out in the quotation above. He curses the very fact that he is alive! The whole psychology of suffering is on display. Why me? Why this? Why now? Anything but this! Let me die!
It is important when meditating on this great and majestic book to simply let Job be Job and not try, like his friends, to "figure out" what is going on. In listening and observing, we can come to a new and profound appreciation of the mystery of suffering. The newspaper everyday offers me thousands of Job's and I can only pray. Job will teach us if we let him. AMEN
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