Sunday, February 05, 2012
 

“I shall not see happiness again.”

There are moments in our lives when we feel just like that. There are moments when we feel it about the world, ‘We shall not see happiness again.’ Job’s words echo down through history. He was a just and upright person who sincerely loved God. He was a proud father and an owner of rich estates. He had been in superb health and was enjoying the fruits of his labors. He was well buttressed with what it seemed everything that the world could provide for him. And then it all collapsed. Life as he knew it began to disintegrate. He lost his estates. He lost his children. He lost his good health. His “Why, God?” echoes down through history.

If God is loving and compassionate why does he allow these things? What did I do to deserve this? How can there be a God, if these things happen? Look at what happens to good people! Look at the mess the world is in! Pain, sorrow, hunger, injustice, war and death seem to be integral to the world. How could a good God permit all this?

The Book of Job does not give any ready answers. Instead God asks Job some questions. He asks him, “Who do you think you are to question God’s deeds, with your puny understanding?” “Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Where were you when all the morning stars sang together?” “Where were you when I set out the boundaries for the whole world? Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place?” Who are we to understand God’s ways?

Despite his circumstances, Job never doubts that he is in God’s hands. He rails against God. He berates God. He does not understand why all these catastrophes are happening to him. He does not understand, but he does not doubt God’s existence. He asks “Why?” He is like the disciples in the gospel who say to the Lord, “Does it not concern you that we are about to perish?”

Jesus is the answer to Job’s questions and puzzlement. “God so loved the world that he sent his own Son that all might believe through him.” But Jesus is not a ‘ready’ answer either. We see him reach down to raise Peter’s mother in law to life. We see him cure the multitudes and expel demons. His whole ministry is a reaching out to the oppressed and to the needy. But he does not magically change the world, or banish pain and sorrow. Disciples would say about the Messiah, “We were hoping …!” But Jesus did not fulfill their hopes in the way that they hoped.

Instead, in the garden he joined mankind by saying to the One who had called him “beloved Son”, “Father, let this chalice of suffering pass me by.” On the cross he would say, “My God, my God why have you abandoned me.” He echoes our own cries, and our own experiences. But after his resurrection he would say to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Was it not ‘necessary’ that the Messiah should suffer these things and so enter into his glory?” “Necessary,” because again and again Jesus is declared as “beloved Son,” and yet suffers these torments. After seeing how the “beloved Son of the Father” suffers, can we doubt God’s love for us and for the world despite its suffering?

Suffering and sorrow are still a mystery. But God’s love for those who suffer is certain. That is what we learn through Jesus. That is the faith we pray for today.


 

Father Kevin P. Casey

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 Date This Page Was Last Edited:   Thursday, February 02, 2012 12:58 PM