Job: A person of strong faith, unwavering hope

Today’s first reading, Job 1:6-22, at first was very disturbing to me!  I said to myself: “How can God give Satan permission to attack Job, a righteous person, destroy his possessions and take the life of his children. What cruelty!  God? God as I know God?  No way!”   I vehemently oppose this image of God. I reject it!

Jesus does not present God to us as a cruel God. On the contrary, Jesus shows us that God is compassionate, heals the brokenhearted, binds up wounds, makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak, and gives vision back to the blind, spiritually and physically blind.  The lame walk and the dead are restored to life, physically and spiritually.  Satan is cast out, confronted, thrown into the swine.

So what does Job teach us? Not that God is cruel but that God shields us from that form of destruction that is eternally fatal: the lost of our souls, spiritual death.  Job remains strong in his faith and in his trust of God, because God did not abandon him at all.  Job’s love for his Creator God never wavered because of God’s power at work in the depth of his being.  Job comes through the sufferings of his life stronger than ever. Why? Because God never left his side.

We learn this same lesson from Jesus, who did not escape the sufferings of this world either.  Like Job and Jesus, each of us  who cling to our faith will rise from the “ashes of death,” whatever form death takes. Who we really are and what really matters—our eternal salvation, our faith and trust in the Lord, our love for God, others and ourselves—is strengthened and purified as gold tried in fire, as we pass through this “valley of tears.”  None of us, who believe in Jesus, who cling to God, is diminished by the difficulties of this life. No! Our true selves emerge, as it did for Job!

A Time for Everything (Eccl 3:1-11)

“There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for everything under the heavens” we read in today’s first reading, Eccl 3: 1-11.  How difficult for us to comprehend the Wisdom of God. I don’t understand, for instance,  why my mother was taken from the family when four of my siblings were still in grade school and I was still a teenager. I don’t understand why evil persists in the world, why men and women struggle desperately and still face foreclosures; why children, adolescents and young adults are kidnapped and sold into the sex slave, drugged and raped. I don’t understand why women, many times, are treated like second class citizens, less than male counterparts, in the world and in the church when Jesus did not treat women that way.  I don’t understand why earthquakes, famines, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires and other natural disasters strike so often.  Perhaps the answer is in the reason God was crucified, tortured and made subject to death. That seems senseless, too, to a faithless heart.  Faith tells us, however, that Jesus’ death was the key to life, eternal life, salvation and a restoration of our relationship with God and  one another. Time takes on infinite meaning in the Timeless One. So all those things I don’t understand contain the Seed of Timelessness, the Seed that will bear new life in time.  In all the incomprehensible facts of life,  God’s work is being accomplished with us not knowing, most of the time (cf.  Eccl 3:1-11).  As Soren Kirkegaard  once said: Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.  And how challenging it is to live with life’s mysteries, especially the mysteries of our faith and the mystery of persistent injustices in the world and in the church, especially  among men and women who profess to be following the way Jesus modeled for us.

Setting our Agendas Aside

In today’s Gospel, Luke 9: 7-9, Luke tells us about Herod the Tetrarch, who is concerned that John the Baptist, whom he beheaded has returned to life.  John was a threat to Herod—“Don’t tell me he is back,” Herod must have wondered. “I want to see him.”  He is motivated by fear, jealousy, envy.  Jesus is an enemy as was John the Baptist who confronted his immorality.

You and I are not different from Herod. When you and I have made choices that we know are wrong, we, too, fear being exposed.   We know when our ambitions are false, based on jealousy, envy and pride.  In those times, the ego avoids confrontations.  We do not want to be put in a position where we come up short. That is human nature at work, not the work of the Spirit.

Jesus knew Herod’s heart.  When they came face to face in court, Jesus had nothing to say to him. Herod’s heart was hardened. His eyes blinded. His ears deaf to the Word of God, to Truth. He had already compromised  his integrity in the worst possible way: taking the life of a human being to save face. And nothing had really changed—hence the fear of John the Baptist returning to haunt him in the person of Jesus.

We may ask ourselves: are we using religion, religious life, priesthood, marriage, our job or positions for the wrong reasons? Do we want to see Jesus out of curiosity? Do we want to be or do whatever to advance our personal  agendas?   To know the answer to those questions, we need to  be honest with ourselves in the solitude of our hearts. We need to be willing to expose ourselves to grace, to THE Word of God, to lay bare my innermost thoughts before God and allow God to change us.  The agendas we push forward with God are the same agendas we push forward in our day to day affairs  (cf. Mt 25: 31-46--“Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do unto me.” That translates into “However you approach your brother and sister, you approach me”).

Yes, living religion sincerely, living our lives with integrity,  is very challenging. It involves total transformation into the mind of Christ. Our personal agendas need to be set aside for God’s agenda.  That is hard to do and can only be done through the Spirit working within us freely.

Proclaimers of the Kingdom

Today’s first reading, Proverbs 30: 5-9, begins with the statement: “Every word of God is tested…”  You and I are not THE Word of God but a word of God.    Every day, our faith, our trust, our love, our humility, our truthfulness, our altruism, our strength, our obedience to the will of God is tested.  We are assured in many places in the Scriptures, including today’s first reading, that God shields us, protects us.

We are a word of God spoken by God when we were conceived in our mother’s womb.  As Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel (Lk 9: 1-6), we were sent into the world “to proclaim the Kingdom of God.”  We do that by our lives, that is, by loving God by loving ourselves and others, who God also sent into the world to be His servants.  As a word of God, as God’s servant, God equips us with what we need to carry out His will (cf. Luke 9: 1-6). Just as Jesus summoned “the Twelve and gave them power and authority,” so, too, he summons you and I, giving us the power and authority to be His disciples, doing even greater things than Jesus did (cf.Jn 14: 12) if we believe in Christ.  Jesus also warns us, however, that we are sent into this world  as sheep among wolves(Mt. 10: 16). Just as He was persecuted in proclaiming the Kingdom, so, too, will we be persecuted as His servants. No servant is greater than his or her master (cf. Jn. 15:20).

Why, then, do we cringe when difficulties cross our paths? Have we forgotten Jesus’ caution and that we are His followers, doing the work He did and for which He sent us? Have we lost sight of the fact that God will shield us as we pass through “the fire,” and give us the strength He gave the apostles and all of the saints before us?

Total surrender to the Will of God

Today's readings, Proverbs 21: 1-6, 10-13 and Luke 8:19-21, give us profound teachings about those who surrender totally to the will of God, as did His mother Mary;  those who listen, first of all, to the directions of the Holy Spirit rising from the depth of their beings, and, second of all, to directions coming from outside sources, viewing those from the perspective of Jesus' prayer: "May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me" (Jn  17: 21). 

Directions coming from our Source are always about being in love with that which fosters union, promotes well-being, respects the integrity of the other and treats the other as one who is of God, created in the image of God and sent into our lives as God's messenger.  To act out of love requires flexibility of us, not rigid conformity to external commands. "We are not machines programmed to obey God's commands 'according to the letter' of the law" (Word Among Us, September 2012, p. 45).  When we force ourselves into robotic obedience, the soil of our hearts become hardened, rocky, and impervious to grace.  Our heart, then, does not remain, in the words of Proverbs 21: 1, "...a stream...in the hand of the Lord." Consequently,  the Lord, respecting our free will, is not able to direct our hearts wherever the Lord wills (cf Proverbs 21:1).  May our prayer be: Lord, make my heart like "a stream" in your hands that you are able to direct in accord with Your holy will and which You are able to use to build up the kingdom of love, mercy, justice, and peace in a world filled with violence, hatred, and selfish ambitions.

To Anyone Who Has, More Will Be Given

In today’s Gospel, Luke 8: 16-18,  is that baffling statement: “To anyone who has, more will be given and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away.”  That sounds so harsh. Why would those with little lose the little they have. “How fair is that?” we complain.  If we put Jesus’ words in the context of taking time to pray or reflect upon the Word of God or to do “sacred” reading—taking  5, 10, 15, 20 minutes a day to nurture our faith—the little faith we have will increase. If we do not spend any time in prayer during the day or in weekly communal worship, the little faith we have will shrink.  The same holds true concerning other gifts. Let’s say that I say to myself, “I have nothing to give” and so I give nothing. I don’t go to the wake. I don’t go to the Bible study. I don’t pitch in at the soup kitchen. I don’t take time to listen to my children or I don’t take time to help my spouse or my children—“my helping won’t matter” or whatever excuse we use.  The little we have, then, shrinks. On the other hands, if we give the little we have, if we reach out to another in compassion, though we may not know what to do or say that would be helpful, our reaching out is rewarded.  We discover how rich it was to be present and show support to another person who is hurting or how appreciative one is to whom we  offered our assistance and with whom we pitched in to help.  We may have said little or done little, so it seems, but the person is eternally grateful that we dropped by to say hello, “how are you doing” or that we cleaned up the dishes or mowed the lawn or took out the garbage without being asked.   The little we had to give—our love, our compassion, our concern, our understanding-- increased to having even more to give

The power of prayer

In the psalm of today’s liturgy, Ps. 56, we pray: “For you have rescued me from death, my feet, too, from stumbling; that I may walk before God in the light of the living.”  And the Gospel, Luke 8: 4-15, speaks of the parable of the sower, spreading seed. Some seed fell where it was trampled upon and eaten up by birds. Some seed fell on rocky ground and did not grow while other seed fell among thorns and was choked off. Still other seed fell on rich ground, grew and produced rich fruit.

 

We are challenged to be “rich soil,” that is soil filled with nutrients, fertilized, moistened, open to God’s outpouring graces, nurtured by our living of the faith, of our imitation of Christ, of our practicing the Beatitudes and loving God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength and all our mind and our neighbor as ourselves (cf. Lk 10:27). 

This morning I brought “the fertilizer” of a particular experience to the Lord in prayer. I was grappling with the request to attend a fundraiser to support homeless shelters run by one of my fellow Sisters.  I was resisting with the excuse: I know no one. I do not want to give up a weekend, etc..  With reservation, I asked the Lord for feedback, as I was also feeling selfish for not feeling gung-ho about attending and I was also afraid of the Lord’s answer.   The Lord challenged me for being the “rich man” looking at Lazarus at his gate and doing nothing. I realized the invitation to attend this fundraiser was an opportunity for me to participate in the ministry to the homeless, a ministry that gives these unfortunate persons a chance to regain their dignity, learn ways to save money, find jobs and take themselves off the street.  In short, the Lord “rescued me from death, my feet, too, from stumbling; that I may walk before God in the light of the living.”

In truth, prayer  transforms rocky soil into receptive soil, rescues seeds choked off by a zillion excuses (thorns in the spiritual life) and transplants them into soil receptive to graces. Taking time to consult with the Lord enables all of us to be changed by the Living Word of God, a Word that cuts to the marrow of our bones, revealing our sinful, selfish motives. That can be risky and maybe the reason, many times, we keep busy and don’t take time to listen to the Lord in prayer.