God Takes On the Life of Job

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

If you came to Mass today looking for a pick-me-up reading, our first reading from the Book of Job was probably not helpful.  We’ve probably all had days like Job, though, thinking that our life is just dragging on and is full of misery.  Remember that at this point, Job has lost almost of all of his material wealth, his children have been killed, and he himself is afflicted with sores.  His wife’s advice in all of this: curse God and die!  Not the loving support you want to hear from your spouse!  Instead, I think in hard times we all would rather that we had someone to sympathize with us; not just someone who feels bad for us, but someone who has gone through the same or similar circumstances.

That is the great news about the Incarnation!  God sees us in our misery, a misery which far surpasses that of Job, but He doesn’t just empathize with us, that is, suffer in us without any idea of what it really means.  Our God takes flesh in the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and comes down to know our pain.  When God takes on our human flesh, not just living in it but truly making it His own, uniting our human nature to His divine nature forever, He takes on our misery, without giving up any of His glory.  

But while He could have avoided the nastiness of our fallen condition, He doesn’t.  In fact, our Gospel reminds us that He went down right into the middle of it all.  He spends time and touches people who are sick “with various diseases.”  He drives out demons.  He even enters into the delicate relationship between a son and his mother-in-law when He goes to the house of Simon Peter.  And, as our Gospel also states, He goes out to preach and to heal and to expel demons in other villages, not just His own.  He takes upon Himself all that it means to be human, but without sinning.  But, though He never sins, He even takes sin upon Himself as He suffers the pain and the penalty of sin.  When we sin, we (hopefully) feel bad enough because we have injured (venial sins) or severed (mortal sins) our relationship with God.  But imagine how much more horrible that must have felt for Jesus Christ, Himself God, to take upon Himself separation from God.  When we think about it, Jesus’ words on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” become even more powerful.  Jesus even shares in our death, the ultimate penalty of sin, as He breathes His last and His body loses the breath of God.

That doesn’t sound like it, but it’s good news.  It sounds horrible that God would have to go through that, and it’s for that reason that people weep when they think about the Passion of Jesus Christ, but it’s really good news.  Our God does not simply empathize with us, but sympathizes with us(which means He suffers with us).  He embraces us as we suffer, and reminds us that He knows the pain that we go through, not as a distant onlooker, but as a participant in our pain.

And that is the good news that St. Paul preaches.  That is the Gospel (which means good news) that St. Paul is obliged to preach, because he wants others to know that they do not suffer alone, and that, after all Jesus’ suffering, new life was won.  That is why St. Paul made himself a slave to all; why he became weak to the weak and all things to all.  St. Paul wants others to know that while life can sometimes seem as miserable as Job, Jesus has passed through pain and death and has transformed it into joy and life.  

Today the Church celebrates World Marriage Day, and next weekend we’ll have a blessing for Married Couples which will coincide with our St. Valentine’s Day Dinner Dance (and the Sunday after).  The call of Catholic married couples is to be a sacrament, a sign instituted by Christ which brings grace.  Too many married couples feel like Job, with life as a drag.  Catholic married couples are meant to show them, through their own living out of the vocation of marriage, that marriage may not be easy, and that sometimes couples might feel like Job, but that Christ has transformed marriage into a way to become holy.  They show it to others by their love for each other.  They show it to a new generation as they conceive and raise children in the faith.  They preach the Gospel by letting Christ sanctify and transform their love for each other so that when others look at them, they see the love of Jesus for His Bride, the Church.  

And we, the Bride, the Church, are not always easy to love, as many married couples sometimes experience.  We, God’s People, are not always faithful to Him; we do not always love Him; we do not always show that love for Him by prayer, spending time with Him, making Him the priority in our life.  And yet, Jesus continues to love us and pour Himself out for us as He sits at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us.  Married couples: I challenge you to say 1 Our Father with each other each day.  If you do, I promise not that marriage will be easy, but that you will have the strength from heaven to persevere even in the hard times.  High schoolers, college students, and young adults: I challenge you to say 1 Hail Mary each day, asking our Blessed Mother to help show you if you are called to marriage, and if you are called to that beautiful vocation, to show you whom to marry.  For the rest of us, let us pray 1 Glory Be each day for the sanctification of married couples and those discerning a vocation to marriage so that our church, our city, our nation, and our world can be filled with examples of Christ’s love.

Catholic Culture?

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            What would a Catholic culture look like today?  It can often be easier to bemoan the present than to dream of the future.  But let’s take some time to dream, to hope, to imagine what life could be like.  Now, we may think it’s a little arrogant to want to the culture to reflect our beliefs.  And I’m certainly not saying that we would set up a country where you can only enter if you’re Catholic.  But I’m talking about a world where the Catholic view of the world is so well lived that it’s in the air we breathe.  And we want it to be that way, but not because we can be the most powerful.  But if, as Vatican II says, Jesus reveals what humanity is called to be, then what we have we should want to share with everyone, not keep to ourselves.

           

That’s what Jesus means when He says in today’s Gospel passage, “‘You are the salt of the earth.  But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?  It is no longer good for anything…You are the light of the world.  A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden…Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.’”  We are meant to give flavor and light to the culture, to the world, and the more we do that, the more we encourage people into right belief and right worship.  Our life of service is meant to help fill this church.  And our worship in this church is meant to enable our life of service.  If all we do is serve without drawing people to conversion and belief in Jesus, then our service is missing a necessary component.  If our worship and belief do not propel us to serve others, than our worship and belief are empty.  As St. John, our heavenly patron, says in his first letter, if we don’t love the brother or sister whom we can see, how can we claim to love God whom we cannot see?

            In a Catholic culture, we embrace and serve the poor, especially those at our front door.  We do pretty good work here with our St. John Food Pantry.  But it goes beyond food bank.  It is a whole way of life.  Think about your clothes: what do you need, and what is extra?  For me, I have a rule that, because I have basically what I need—my clerical attire, some spring/summer casual clothes, and some fall/winter casual clothes—whenever I want to get a new article of clothing, I also have to donate something to the St. Vincent de Paul store.  I have one daily pair of boots, one dress pair of boots, Sperry’s for the summer time, and one pair of athletic shoes.  That’s all I need.  My parents go through shoes faster than I do, because they are more active with running.  That’s what they need.  Business leaders may need more suits than I do, because they go to more dressy functions, including many major charities.  Living a simple life will look a little different for each of us.  But the key is that we don’t just buy clothes because we want them; we buy clothes because we need them.  And should we feel we need a new article of clothing, we can, in many cases, give something else away.

            Another great question for us is how we spend our time caring for those at the fringes of society?  Our first reading is just one example of how God highlights His preference for the poor and outcast.  Is it because poverty and exclusion lead to holiness?  Not necessarily.  Poverty and being excluded can just as easily lead to hatred, jealousy, and vengeful thoughts and deeds.  But the poor and outcasts have no one else to rely on, and so God takes their cause.  And when we do the same, we spread God’s love.  We live as Jesus’ disciples by following the example of the Master.  In ancient cultures, widows were often part of the defenseless because they no longer had a husband to get them food, protect them, etc.  Widows are not so defenseless and helpless now, thank God, but I was just talking to a widow from our parish the other day, and I asked her how things were going.  She said they were ok, but she was lonely.  This is a woman who goes and has gone to Church at least every Sunday certainly for all of her adult life, and, from my four years here, has gone to many weekday Masses.  And yet no one makes time to visit her.  Sadly, I have not made much time, either, so I include myself in that challenge.  Financially widows find more protection these days, but how do we do at visiting widows and making sure they are not lonely?  In a parish about 3400 families, there should be no reason for any person to feel like they don’t have someone they can turn to, or someone to check in on them to make sure they’re alright.

            On this celebration of World Marriage Day, it’s also important that a Catholic culture is one that supports marriage as created by God.  A loving marriage between a man and a woman, with children lovingly welcomed and cared for is a great way to give people a good beginning to use their gifts and talents for the betterment of their city, State, and country, and for the building up of the city of God.  And working to protect that sacred institution is part of being salt and light.  Being salt and light also means that we welcome and support our brothers and sisters who have a same-sex attraction, and help them to strive, along with all of us—married, single, priests, and consecrated people—to live the chaste life that the Gospel calls us to.  Being salt and light also means that we help women who feel like they have no choice but to abort their babies to choose life, as we assist them through the difficulties of a pregnancy which so often has no other support.

            All of these issues that I just mentioned: poverty, spending habits, marriage and family life, and working to end abortion, are all part of the church’s teaching on social justice.  We can’t just pick the parts that we like.  If we say we are for social justice, then we embrace it all.  There are many in our one parish who are working for social justice in its different facets.  But we always need to challenge each other to make sure we’re doing all we can.  Maybe as individuals we can’t do it all, but as the Body of Christ, we can join together and support another in making our world more saturated with the Gospel as a Catholic culture.