The Catholic Calendar for Friday, October 6, 2006
The Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time
St. Bruno, priest
Bl. Marie-Rose Durocher, virgin

Scripture from today's Liturgy of the Word:
Job 38:1, 12-21; 40:3-5
Psalm 139:1-3, 7-10, 13-14
Luke 10:13-16

A reflection on today's Sacred Scripture:

"And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me." (Luke 10:16)

Job's story raises the old question: "If God is love, why does He allow bad things to happen to good people?" On this side of life, the answer remains an enigma, for our finite minds cannot encompass the methods God employs to enable us to accept and work out our salvation. God excludes no one from His saving plan; it is we who exclude ourselves. Love is God's very essence; He created us to participate in His love to form genuine, caring relationships, first with Him and in consequence with one another. Most world suffering is caused by God-starved minds and hearts inflicting pain on one another.

Satan believed Job's devotion to God would vanish if he lost his children, health and possessions. But Job's faith in the face of these devastating losses proved his love for God was pure, not contingent on his blessings. Job's friends saw God as cruel and vengeful and begged him to confess and repent of his "hidden" sin to abate divine anger. Job's despairing wife bitterly advised him to curse God and die.

With wife and friends against him while knowing he was innocent of sin, Job turned to God to ask, "Why?" God's answer to Job was implied in the description of His creation which raises a more basic question: Would the God who made this wondrous world filled with everything necessary to sustain and prosper those He created in His own image do so only to watch them suffer and end wretchedly in the grave?

Today we should ask, would God have sent His sinless Son to die at the hands of sinful people if His basic motivation were not to save us from spiritual death? Christ's reaction toward the unrepentant towns was not anger but deep sadness that they had chosen to lock themselves into a sinful, faithless, loveless and hopeless existence.

O Christ, You are God Who came to us in human flesh to cleanse us of sin and give us new life. Awaken this world to the root cause of human misery and open our hearts to receive Your grace and Your healing. Amen.

- Marie Bocko, OCDS
(mlbocko at earthlink dot net)