Word to the Wise
Saturday, October 5, 2024 - Saturday in the 26th Week in Ordinary Time
[Job 42:1-3, 5-6, 12-17 and Luke 10:17-24]I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be hindered. I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know. I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you. Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes. Thus the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his earlier ones. [Job]
It can be difficult to remember, in reading and meditating on the Book of Job, that it has a happy ending! The depth of his suffering - physical, emotional and spiritual - is so profound that one might be justified in thinking that such suffering cannot end in happier days than before. Perhaps the ultimate lesson is that evil of the most profound kind still cannot triumph over God and good. God was confident in Job. And Job could not be shaken from his own conviction that he was a righteous person, no matter what his "friends" tried to undermine.
The current devastation from Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and Tennessee has left many people with profound losses of property, injury and grief. This kind of suffering comes from what theologians call "amoral suffering" - not attributable to a deliberate act on the part of someone. Time and again there are stories of both grief and local help. The temptation to give up and succumb to sorrow is terrible amidst such tragedy (let alone what we hear about in the Middle East and Ukraine). Yet, in the end, tested as the human spirit can be in such sorrow, God has given us a capacity to rise above it in ways both small and great. Job was not punished for some sin. His righteousness was steadfast. His suffering tested his spirit to the utmost but he and God triumph over Satan in the end. So can we. AMEN