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In need of Jesus’ healing touch

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Job 7:1-4, 6-7.

The Book of Job is one of the great literary masterpieces of the Bible. It addresses some of the deepest questions of human existence, questions like the suffering of the innocent and how God can be just while seeming to allow misery to prevail in the lives of good people.

We don’t seem to know much about the background of The Book of Job. Its author is unknown. We’re not sure when it was written. Scholars think it was between the seventh and the fifth centuries B.C. — a rather wide span of time! It is written in story form, a story about a good and a prosperous man who loses everything in a series of tests from God. His friends try to explain what is happening to him by contending that he must have done something wrong. Job insists that he has not done anything wrong, and it is this that sets the stage for a marvelous intervention from God toward the end of the book. In several chapters of breathtakingly beautiful poetry, God, speaking out of a whirlwind, enunciates the lesson of the story: human beings cannot understand God’s ways and they shouldn’t try. God’s mind and God’s will absolutely surpass human capabilities. Our finite human mind cannot probe the depth of divine omniscience that governs the world. At the end of His long discourse, God restores to Job and his family everything that had been taken away, and they all live happily ever after.

In spite of its high literary quality and the important questions it addresses, Job is used only twice in the three year Sunday lectionary cycle: once on this Sunday and again, seven weeks from now, on the twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time in this Year B.

The reading for this Sunday is based on Job’s sufferings, but is a description of the burdens that, at one time or another, afflict almost every human life. We are not in charge of our lives, Job says. We are like slaves or employees of a demanding master whose whole life is taken up carrying out somebody else’s orders. Our misery doesn’t cease. When we go to bed, we get no relief from our misery, no rest through the long night hours. Our days go by quickly and without hope. At the end of the reading comes a short prayer for mercy as Job asks God to remember how wretched and transitory his life is.

Job’s reflection on the miseries of human life provides a background for the healing work of Christ that we hear about in this Sunday’s Gospel reading (Mark 1:29-39). Mark shows us Jesus confronted with a whole panorama of women and men afflicted with various kinds of human burdens: Simon’s mother-in-law sick with fever, then the faceless, shuffling crowds that come after nightfall, people afflicted with all kinds of maladies, physical, psychological, spiritual. It seemed like everybody in town was there. For one reason or another these people steeped in misery all needed the healing touch of Jesus.

These two readings teach us that God is well acquainted with human misery, even as human beings are well acquainted with the burdens of their existence. But there is a difference in the direction in which each reading points us. The Book of Job leads its readers to humility and trust in the power of God, but it is a God of mystery and detachment, before whom human beings must stand in silent awe. The gospels, on the other hand, tell us the story of Jesus, a human being like ourselves who knew human misery from within. Jesus dealt with the burdens of human kind with the healing power of God, but also with the compassion of one who was himself vulnerable and acquainted with grief and infirmity. Jesus does not manifest himself as the God of the whirlwind, but as the Lord on whom human misery has a special claim.

Both ways of portraying God are valid and true, and both need to be taken into account as we relate to God. God’s ways are not our ways. God’s providence far surpasses our capacity to understand. We dare not run the risk of thinking of God as somehow just like us, only bigger. God is utterly and totally different from us and we overlook that at our peril.

At the same time, God is concerned with us because, through Jesus, we are God’s brothers and sisters. It is right for us to turn to the Lord and ask for help, confident that we are addressing a compassionate Lord, personally acquainted with our griefs and infirmities.

God does not expect us to overlook our infirmities or pretend that our sufferings do not exist. Through His teachings in Sacred Scripture He leads us to acknowledge Him both as almighty Father whose plans we cannot fathom and yet also as compassionate brother, anxious to heal.

For reflection and dDiscussion

What have been the greatest sufferings in my life?

How have I experienced the healing power of God?



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	*Overtures* Reflection on the first readings of the Sunday liturgy By Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk In need of Jesus’ healing touch Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Job 7:1-4, 6-7. The Book of Job is one of the great literary masterpieces of the Bible. It addresses some of the deepest questions of human existence, questions like the suffering of the innocent and how God can be just while seeming to allow misery to prevail in the lives of good people. We don’t seem to know much about the background of The Book of Job. Its author is unknown. We’re not sure when it was written. Scholars think it was between the seventh and the fifth centuries B.C. — a rather wide span of time! It is written in story form, a story about a good and a prosperous man who loses everything in a series of tests from God. His friends try to explain what is happening to him by contending that he must have done something wrong. Job insists that he has not done anything wrong, and it is this that sets the stage for a marvelous intervention from God toward the end of the book. In several chapters of breathtakingly beautiful poetry, God, speaking out of a whirlwind, enunciates the lesson of the story: human beings cannot understand God’s ways and they shouldn’t try. God’s mind and God’s will absolutely surpass human capabilities. Our finite human mind cannot probe the depth of divine omniscience that governs the world. At the end of His long discourse, God restores to Job and his family everything that had been taken away, and they all live happily ever after. In spite of its high literary quality and the important questions it addresses, Job is used only twice in the three year Sunday lectionary cycle: once on this Sunday and again, seven weeks from now, on the twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time in this Year B. The reading for this Sunday is based on Job’s sufferings, but is a description of the burdens that, at one time or another, afflict almost every human life. We are not in charge of our lives, Job says. We are like slaves or employees of a demanding master whose whole life is taken up carrying out somebody else’s orders. Our misery doesn’t cease. When we go to bed, we get no relief from our misery, no rest through the long night hours. Our days go by quickly and without hope. At the end of the reading comes a short prayer for mercy as Job asks God to remember how wretched and transitory his life is. Job’s reflection on the miseries of human life provides a background for the healing work of Christ that we hear about in this Sunday’s Gospel reading (Mark 1:29-39). Mark shows us Jesus confronted with a whole panorama of women and men afflicted with various kinds of human burdens: Simon’s mother-in-law sick with fever, then the faceless, shuffling crowds that come after nightfall, people afflicted with all kinds of maladies, physical, psychological, spiritual. It seemed like everybody in town was there. For one reason or another these people steeped in misery all needed the healing touch of Jesus. These two readings teach us that God is well acquainted with human misery, even as human beings are well acquainted with the burdens of their existence. But there is a difference in the direction in which each reading points us. The Book of Job leads its readers to humility and trust in the power of God, but it is a God of mystery and detachment, before whom human beings must stand in silent awe. The gospels, on the other hand, tell us the story of Jesus, a human being like ourselves who knew human misery from within. Jesus dealt with the burdens of human kind with the healing power of God, but also with the compassion of one who was himself vulnerable and acquainted with grief and infirmity. Jesus does not manifest himself as the God of the whirlwind, but as the Lord on whom human misery has a special claim. Both ways of portraying God are valid and true, and both need to be taken into account as we relate to God. God’s ways are not our ways. God’s providence far surpasses our capacity to understand. We dare not run the risk of thinking of God as somehow just like us, only bigger. God is utterly and totally different from us and we overlook that at our peril. At the same time, God is concerned with us because, through Jesus, we are God’s brothers and sisters. It is right for us to turn to the Lord and ask for help, confident that we are addressing a compassionate Lord, personally acquainted with our griefs and infirmities. God does not expect us to overlook our infirmities or pretend that our sufferings do not exist. Through His teachings in Sacred Scripture He leads us to acknowledge Him both as almighty Father whose plans we cannot fathom and yet also as compassionate brother, anxious to heal. For reflection and dDiscussion** What have been the greatest sufferings in my life? How have I experienced the healing power of God?

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