Jesus and Job are examples of how we can respond when we face challenges we don’t understand
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
We read from the Book of Job this week.
Job faced a deep existential challenge through a series of events involving suffering. We each have our own version of this, even when the specifics differ.
What can we learn from Job in facing our own challenges? Many things, to be sure! But one that stands out is the tension Job experiences between holding fast to God’s standard of how things should go and calling God to his standard of how things should go.
For most of the book, Job holds fast! He lets God be God. But the book finds its dramatic high point when Job gets out of his lane and asks God to answer for His ways.
We all know what that moment is like! It’s understandable — in Job, and in every one of us. God’s ways don’t always make sense to us.
What’s interesting and instructive, however, is that we read about another approach to God’s mysterious ways this week. In the Gospel of Luke, we read how Jesus was “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.”
In Jerusalem, Jesus — like Job — would suffer. And this happened even though Jesus — like Job — was innocent of any wrongdoing. The difference, however, is this: In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus stays in His lane. He lets God be God. And there He’s teaching us a lesson: that God’s mysterious ways pass through the cross, not around it.
Job was an icon of ancient Israel: tempted to rebel against God in the face of suffering. But Job was also a prefigurement of Jesus: the innocent who suffers and whom God blesses more greatly afterward. Finally, Job — when seen in the light of Jesus — is also a lesson for us: We know what it’s like to call God to task and to have to repent and get back in our lane.
Job’s presumption lives in each of us; Jesus’ surrender lives in each of us, too. So we need to help each other in the time of challenge — to follow Jesus rather than Job when things don’t make sense.
We also celebrate a remarkable lineup of saints this week! St. Jerome (Sept. 30) was a man of deep scholarship but also a bit of a temper! St. Therese of Lisieux (Oct. 1) was simple and sweet but also deep in her surrender. St. Francis of Assisi (Oct. 4) was radical in his poverty but also magnetic.
Thinking of these saints, we have to laugh when we read — twice this week! — about how the apostles were arguing about who among them was the greatest. But if we laugh, we also have to wince because we know that the same argument lives in our own hearts.
We regularly compare ourselves to others. That comparison, whether favorable or unfavorable, tends to be unhelpful because it focuses on gifts we haven’t been given, rather than helping us develop the gifts we have been given.
This week’s saints show us a better way: We can recognize and exercise our own gifts, even while celebrating the gifts of others. As St. Gregory of Nyssa says: “If you try to outdo one another in showing respect, your life on earth will be like that of angels.”
Living like Jesus in the face of suffering and living like angels in the face of others’ gifts is not easy! But it’s the high call of Christian life.
