Remembering God is With Us

Dear Friends,

The first reading today is from the Book of Job. Job must have been composed in January or February when our world is bleak! His words find an echo in our own lives…depression, hopelessness, helplessness.

For a person who has lost a loved one or who has experienced the breakup of a relationship or who is out of work or has felt the pressure of being cooped up – anyone in these circumstances can understand Job when he says, “The long night drags on, I am filled with restlessness.”

Job has lost all. His lament was not so much that his possessions and children were gone, as that their passing made no sense. He had done nothing to warrant this suffering. He was a good person, yet he was suffering apparently unjustly and unfairly.

In the Gospel so much is said in so few words that it is tempting to think that Jesus has a simple answer for everything. He touches people, they are cured. Their problems are solved. Did Jesus have the instant cure for everything? No. Jesus was, at times, almost overwhelmed at the pain and suffering he saw.

The question won’t leave us alone. Why? Why pain and suffering, especially when it happens to good people like Job, who are innocent and faithful. It almost seems as though God is powerless. Why? Why? Maybe the closest we can come to an answer is a story I’ve heard several times.

There is a place where people still bring the sick to Jesus. I’ve never been there, perhaps you have. The people I’ve talked with tell a similar if not an identical story. I am speaking of Lourdes in France. It’s like a biblical scene. The sick, sometimes thousands of them, arrive by every possible means of conveyance, with hundreds of volunteers to care for them. Most of them do not receive a cure, but the answer to their prayers, and it is not a trivial one, is a healing in soul and spirit. They are renewed in faith, but the faith is not that they continue to expect physical healing. It is rather a conviction that God is with them. They do not bear the cross alone.

This is the good news, God is with us. It is a truth that is hard for us to take in, and perhaps even harder for us to explain.

For us, when all ties to the future seem to be cut off, when our pain and suffering seem overwhelming, it is in these moments when we are faced with Job’s choice: We can say, as Job’s wife suggested, “curse God and die” or we can come to God with open hands and heart. Tired, confused, angry as we may be, we can abandon hopelessness and bind ourselves to a hope that will sustain us even beyond death.

God promises in the Psalm today:

The Lord heals the brokenhearted. He binds up their wounds. He sustains the lowly.

We are talking about the One who stands against the dark forces of life that threaten to overcome us. We do not have to search for Him. He is among us. He is here. He holds us in his hands. He is our God.

To suffer is to write with our lives what we believe with our hearts. Our belief is that, though the setbacks in life are many, the victory, given to Jesus, will ultimately be ours.

~Sister Joan Sobala