Word to the Wise
Friday, September 30, 2022 - Friday in the 26th Week in Ordinary Time
[Job 38:1, 12-21; 40:3-5 and Luke 10:13-16]Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place.....Have you entered into the sources of the sea, or walked about in the depths of the abyss?...Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth? Tell me if you know all... [Job]
SEPTEMBER 30 ST. JEROME, [priest and doctor of the church]
Job finally gets an answer from God. It is not the answer that he or even most of us would find humanly satisfying. God's answer to Job's WHY? is "Because I'm me and you're you." The liturgical calendar and the feast of the archangels yesterday has deprived us this year of Job's hope in an ultimate vindication: "As for me, I know that my vindicator lives, and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust. This will happen when my skin has been stripped off, and from my flesh I will see God: I will see for myself, my own eyes, not another's, will behold him: my inmost being is consumed with longing." [Job 19:25-27]. That vindication will occur in the form of God's restoration of Job to an even better state than before he was stricken, but only after God has told Job (and by extension, Job's friends] that Job is not in charge of the universe!
We humans alone in all of God's creation (unless the universe has other options we don't know about) have the capacity to ask "WHY?" As the Book of Job makes clear, this blessing of "WHY?" can also be a frustrating one. Christian faith sees ultimate vindication in the eternal life promised to those who are faithful. Jesus' resurrection from the dead is the sign of that vindication. But the "WHY?" of suffering remains a mystery. AMEN