TakeHomeNews 7th Feb 2021
Take Home News • Sermon • Submitted
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· 3 viewsOut of our restlessness we sink further down, but with Jesus there is hope for a better future.
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Father David writes:
Father David writes:
The scripture readings this weekend are quite direct and perhaps need a little explanation.
In our first reading, from the Book of Job, we have an excerpt from a larger pericope entitled My Suffering Is without End. Lasting the whole of chapter 7 Job, our reading is just a small excerpt. Job gives us some real hard understanding in what it means to suffer. How many of us have found our selves in a pit of despair? A place where there is no hope what so ever? We might grumble and gripe about this or that, but, for some people this level of despair is a real and present danger to their psyche.
It is interesting to note that not all suffering is of our own making. Often, there is a judgement that the person suffering must have done something wrong, must have sinned, in order to warrant such suffering. Pope St. John Paul II in a general audience on November 9, 1988 talked about the meaning of suffering in the Light of Christ’s Passion.
A judgement that views suffering exclusively as a punishment for sins runs counter to love for man. ....One see it .... in the case of the man born blind: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (Jn 9:2) It is like pointing the finger against someone. It is a judgement which passes from suffering seen as a physical torment, to that understood as a punishment for sin: someone must have sinned, either the man in question or his parents. It is a moral imputation: he suffers, therefore he must be guilty.
To put an end to this petty and unjust way of thinking, it was necessary to reveal in its essential profundity the mystery of the suffering of the Innocent One, the Holy One, the “Man of Sorrows!” Ever since Christ chose the Cross and died on Golgotha, all who suffer, especially those who suffer without fault, can come face to face with the “Holy One who suffers”. and find in his passion the complete truth about suffering, its full meaning and its importance. In the light of this truth, all those who suffer can feel called to share in the work of Redemption accomplished by means of the Cross. (John Paul II: The Meaning of Suffering in the Light of Christ’s Passion, Nos. 6-7, General Audience 9/11/1988)
The book of Job, has for all who suffer, the insistent message that sin and suffering do not always have a direct causal relationship. It is this message of hope that has the power to speak to every human being that has ever experienced the feeling of being abandoned or punished by God in the midst of suffering.
Jesus suffered for us all on the Cross and during his life time, as we have read in our Gospel today, has a desire to search out those who are suffering to heal them. Not to plague them with judgements of sin. Christ’s divine love is for the good and healing of all people. In same way then, we should have the hope in Jesus, so that we never get to the level of despair that we meet in Job. As St. Paul tells the Corinthians “To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might be all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.” (I Cor 9:22-23).