Homily for Tuesday, 26th Week of Ordinary Time

Homily for Tuesday
26th Week of Ordinary Time

Sept. 27, 2022
Job 3: 1-3, 11-17, 20-23
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, New Rochelle

“Job opened his mouth and cursed his day” (Job 3: 1).

An 18th-century image of Job,

probably of German origin

In yesterday’s 1st reading we were introduced to the undeserved suffering of Job, suffering plotted by Satan to tempt Job to curse God.

Instead, Job curses the day of his birth, laments that he’s alive, wishes for death.  His “path is hidden” from him, and God has hemmed him in (3:23), trapped him in a meaningless existence, left him with a sense of hopelessness.

Suicides rates and acts of violence like mass shootings indicate that those kinds of feelings aren’t rare.  Even if one doesn’t resort to those kinds of desperation, it’s possible for someone to feel that his life has been unfair or meaningless or without hope—to feel like Job.  That could happen even to religious as they regard their lives, their ministry, or their relationships.  Their paths might seem to be hidden.

As one comes toward the end of life, he might ask with Job, “Why is light given to toilers, and life to the bitter in spirit,” and “wait for death” and be “glad when they reach the grave” (3:20-22).  Such could be the final test of one’s faith in God, the test we pray to be spared when we pray “lead us not into temptation,” which interpreters tell us really means, “do not subject us to the final test” (Matt 6:13), as the NAB renders it.

In today’s gospel passage, Jesus “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), to his destiny, where he would be tempted by the fear of death.  Yet he would bravely and faithfully walk the path he’d started on.  He’d face “the final test” and overcome it.

We might anticipate our final test by looking back at the blessings in our lives—not a large family, flocks and herds and servants, such as Job initially enjoyed.  We might observe and count the blessings of brothers, of relatives, of past pupils.  More blessings might be hidden from us:  until Judgment Day, how can we know in what mysterious ways we’ve touched the lives of others for the better and helped them find their paths?  In this life we have only hints of that.  God hasn’t hemmed us in but given us extensive outreach for encouraging pupils, relatives, friends, and our brothers; for, even unawares, sharing the goodness of God with them and so enabled them, in turn, to be instruments of God’s goodness.

We may look forward to death like Job; but unlike Job, look for it as the culmination of God’s blessings, as our path into the heavenly Jerusalem where Jesus waits for us.