5^th Sunday Year B 2006

As many of you may know, the patron saint of desperate cases is Saint Jude. He was invoked for extreme causes because his epistle in the NT speaks about perseverance in just those very situations. But if there is a person before the time of Christ who would qualify for the title, it would be Holy Job. He is the great sufferer of the OT, the man upon whom was heaped every kind of calamity and woe. Not only did he experience all manner of personal loss with physical and mental torments, but he gave voice to the inner torment of his soul in trying to comprehend why God permits such enormous evils to befall him. In doing this, Job gives eloquent voice to what so many have felt in the face of grave hardship and loss.

In today’s excerpt, Job bewails his very life as a slavery: toil, misery, poverty, anxiety over wages, restless, sleepless nights, aging, and happiness as only a memory of good days long past. This is the lamentation of man who has lived long years and seen better times; who has no hope that things are going to improve. This dismal story would seem to find no place in the bible, wherein one goes in search of solace and consolation. The final act of this drama, however, concludes with a happy ending, with Job in better circumstances than ever before. It is a lesson therefore that tries to instill hope in the hearts of the unfortunate who keep faith through their trials on earth that there is something that will yet come that will be not just better days, but a surpassing abundance of happiness that can’t be put into words. In the time before Jesus revealed the certainty of heaven, this could only be hoped for in a Jew’s heart by material compensation, a ‘heaven on earth.’ The fact that this surprising, happy ending of life was most exceptional, makes the story of Job almost incomprehensible or irrelevant without the NT teaching by our Lord who promised the reward of heaven for all the poor in spirit.

God is, so to speak, an opportunist, using his own unique means to bring us to a spiritual awakening. His methods are not man’s. No one would be naturally inclined to use failing health, disease, financial insecurity, a crushed and anguished heart, and fears of all kinds in order to bring about his conversion, or even his purification so as to achieve greater heights of perfection. The all-wise God, however, often permits these things because many, even most people, will not come to God, will not quit their sinful habits of life, or will never make any spiritual advancement until they taste the bitterness of life, come to a spiritual questioning of the ‘why of it all’ with God, and then turn to him with humility and an accepting soul. That kicking against the goad, that resentful reaction to pain and sorrow and sadness is meant to be the turning point towards God and heaven. Of course, some chose to refuse to be taught this lesson of life and live in a smoldering resentment right through their death. This is a tragic outcome for what was meant as an occasion of grace. There are nevertheless remedies that God commonly prescribes for blind humanity in order that they being to see and reform their ways. Left to ourselves in a garden of earthly delights, we would, most all of us, not look any further than sensual satisfaction. An earthly paradise would be sufficient for most. Who then would need a god when all his sensual cravings are met?

The flaw of this kind of thinking is that God does exist, as do heaven and hell. ‘Heaven on earth’ is a fantasy, a utopian dream. But the fundamental thing is that God made us, designed us, intended us, to live forever, not here on earth but rather to live in union with Him in a world of infinitely better circumstances. Of course, we don’t perceive this readily because of our fleshly makeup and because our intellect, that rational light within us that can know and grasp these truths, is most often too dim to lead us rise to pursue God’s will. And so, our Taskmaster imposes on us, usually much against our wills, the hardships of life to move us out of our complacency and to cry out in pursuit of Him.

So the questing of Job, his tortured soul and anguish, have a lesson to teach us about the justice of God and the priceless worth of God’s recompense in the next life. We call all this by a single word ‘hope.’ It is a trust in the goodness and the providence of God that He will not deal with us in any other way but for our ultimate good.

We need reminders from time to time about this so as to lean upon Him in complete trust when all is confusing and life without God cannot yield any satisfying answers: they are not supposed to. God made us for Himself, and without Him we will never be truly happy, nor anything be right. We are meant to live here only in hope.