Fifth Sunday of the Year,
Holy Job is the celebrated
spokesman for suffering humanity. There is no one who has ever been ‘down and
out’ who could surpass in eloquence the expression of anguish, misery and the
profound sense of desolation that can befall a man in a state of extreme
suffering. Today’s excerpt from the Book of Job that forms the first reading is
one such passage. It could only have been composed by a man who has felt the
heavy blows of an immense personal tragedy. The overwhelming grief and distress
that entered Job’s soul found expression in his words: “Like a slave who longs
for shade, like a hireling who waits for his wages, I have been assigned months
of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me. I am filled with
restlessness until the dawn. My days come to end without hope. My life is like
the wind. I shall not see happiness again. Is not man’s life on earth a
drudgery?”
Actually, the Church is
rather sparing here, reserving some of the most poignant outpourings from Job’s
aching heart. There is, for example, a passage such as this–not included in the
reading for Mass: “I loathe my life. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
I will say to God, Your hands fashioned and made me; and now you turn about and
destroy me. Why did you bring me forth from the womb? Would that I had died
before any eye had seen me, carried from the womb to the grave. Leave me alone.
I shall go to the land of gloom and deep darkness. Where light is as darkness.”
(ch. 10)
I quote these passages for
you to awaken you to the relation that religion has to the deepest achings of
the heart of man. It so often happens that religion is a superficiality, an
external observance or social convention until...until there’s a cutting
to the quick, until there is a wound in the soul, until one knows the pathos of
suffering some great affliction of spirit. The keen ‘blade’ often has to cut
into the heart before man realizes his profound need for God and before he
begins to cry out from the depths of his being for God’s mercy. How often God
uses suffering as the means of communicating humanity’s misery, a desolation
that is only a little foretaste of what souls in hell are constrained to suffer
every day. Life without God is the very definition of hell, and many people
taste its bitterness–even in this life. For some, suffering is their own
participation in the cross of Jesus Christ–that is to say, it becomes the
occasion of a conversion to God, a turning point in which they have come to
realize their own emptiness, and even wretchedness, should they attempt to live
without God. But perhaps for too many others, this poignant experience–that God
intends for some good results–becomes instead the cause of their further
downfall and descent, to a condition of a hardness of heart, a refusal to
submit to God: the prelude to eternal
torment. All depends on what one does with the opportunity! Will it be the
cause of the rise or the fall of this man’s soul? Good God, how much depends on
our willing cooperation with the purposes for which you sent us the trials of
life! It makes all the difference in the world, and all the difference in
eternity on how we deal with the crises of life.
Not every man’s assigned
‘cross’ in life will match the extremity of that apportioned to Job–and for
that we must be grateful to God, who knows our limited capacity and measures
out for us only what each can endure. Yet everyone is certain to have some
taste of the bitterness of life. We may well think of this as but one part of
our sinful inheritance from Adam. Some people have created their own miserable
condition on account of their sins. It bears mention here that sin’s
punishments are not reserved for the next life only. Even here, one has often
to feel the chastisements that are the just penalty for our sins. But religion
is also well familiar with the truth that God chastises those whom He loves.
Often even the most holy souls are put through the crucible of suffering, not
so much on account of their sins (although that’s part of the reason), but for
other purposes of God, such as, for example, their greater advancement in
holiness, a progression that is not possible without what spiritual writers
call the dark night of the senses, and the dark night of the spirit. Other
reasons that God may send afflictions to holy souls may be for the purposes of
reparation for sin, either for their own sins, or for those of others. Like
Saint Paul who said that filled up in his own life a missing portion of Christ’s
sufferings in order to help the Church, so many good people yet today
generously offer themselves and their sufferings for the general welfare–and
thus we are–unaware–beneficiaries of their magnanimity. Only in heaven will we
know all this, and thank them and our good God for it.
The portion of the Imitation
that falls next is right on target regarding the theme of this homily. it
is entitled “On the lack of all comfort”.
The author would not have us forget that we often receive spiritual
comforts from God. When this happens, he say, we should receive them
gratefully. But these are His free gifts, not things He is obliged to give us.
We should not be proud over what we have been given, nor over joyful, nor
presumptuous, but humble. The time of testing is sure to come and comfort will
be withdrawn. Then our duty will be not to despair but patiently to await the
will of heaven. God can restore our consolations, even richer than before–as He
did in fact in the end for Job. The writer identifies another reason God may
allow moments of darkness: these help to strip a man of self-love and from
attachments to the world. “You must also learn to give up even your close and
beloved friend for the love of God,” he writes. The purpose of his chapter is
to counsel us what we are to do when the hardship hits. At such times, there is
no better recourse than patience and submission to the will of God. A
consolation is sure to follow for those who persevere. God comforts so that we
can be strong in the time of trial. God also sends trials so that we will not
become proud, or attached, or fall prey to the devil. God, who is all-wise, has
arranged everything for our benefit, if only we employ every circumstance to fulfill His holy will.
May God make saints out of us, and grant that we will not resent His disciplinary methods when He applies them, since they are calculated ultimately for our good!