In today’s first reading, Job 1:6-22, when angels of God present themselves before
the Lord, among them is a fallen angel, Satan, who has been “roaming the earth
and patrolling it,” and still does. Know that Satan is not roaming the earth to
protect us but to trip us up to curse the Lord our God, to rebel against God as
he and the other bad angels had done.
Satan is jealous of us, as he has lost heaven eternally and does not, in
any shape or form, want us to enter eternity as women or men who have accepted
God as God and ourselves as creatures subject to our Creator. God has secured salvation for all who obey
Him, are grateful to Him and recognize God as our Savior, our Sustainer, our
Comforter and Protector, who remain faithful even when things are rough and
tough, even when nature and the violence
with humans turns against us. After all, God did not even spare His Son the
worst that is within other human beings who are jealous of each other. The
leaders, in Jesus’ time, put Jesus to death out of jealousy. Jesus, as God Incarnate, did not lose faith
in His Father, even as He died upon the cross.
Satan’s jealousy is
something all of us will endure and survive by the grace of God, as Job did! He
lost all of his possessions and even his children, who, when the building in
which they dwelt collapsed upon them in a vicious storm, died. His response:
“Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb,
And naked shall I go back again.
The Lord gave and the Lord has
taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
May our faith, like Job’s, never falter, even in the
worst of times. God is at our side. God trusts us, knowing the strength of our
faith, and, as with Jesus, endures what we endure, as Jesus was not alone on
that cross. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, though three divine persons,
are one God! In God, you and I live and move and have our being. So, we, too,
are never alone in the sufferings we endure or will endure!
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