February 7, 2021--Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time


 Reflection on Job 7:1-7

Eve of the Feast Day of St. Josephine Bakhita (February 8th)

 


When I reflect on what some of us are going through at this time and when I look at what people around the world are going through, I can’t help but relate our cries to the cry of Job in the first reading.  Covid-19 has revealed a lot about the state of our world.  Some may ask, “why has God abandoned me?”  While others may ask, “why is God still abandoning me?”

Some of us have lost loved ones. Some of us are struggling with various health issues.  Most of us are weighed down by the inability to meet in-person with family and friends and many of us are just personally weighed down with the current state of our world.  Whatever our personal struggles, we struggle with being angry with God and the guilt that comes along with being angry at God. But here again, Job gives us a clue, later in the chapter that today’s reading was taken from, Job says,

20 If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity?
   Why have you made me your target?
   Why have I become a burden to you?
21 Why do you not pardon my transgression
   and take away my iniquity?

Job is confident enough in God to let God know that he doesn’t think what has happened to him is fair. He as angry and hurt, yet Job doesn’t give up. He waits in his pain. Of all things, we humans are asked to do, it is to wait in our pain that is most difficult. Yet, this is what we are called to do. We can be angry but we must wait out the anger—wait in our pain, wait for peace to envelop our troubled hearts. Most of all, we must wait on God.   Sometimes one doesn’t even know they are waiting for God to act in their lives.  St. Josephine Bakhita, who had endured slavery and torture, later stated “Had I known the Lord during my long slavery, how much less I would have suffered.”[i]  In other words, just to know God, of God’s love would have eased her suffering.

Waiting to emerge from the pain can be a time of personal transformation.  St. Bakhita serves as an example of the kind of transformation that can happen.  Maria Louisa Dagnino of the time a young student asked Bakhita,

"What would you do, if you were to meet your captors?" Without hesitation she responded: "If I were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands. For, if these things had not happened, I would not have been a Christian and a religious today"[ii]

 

As followers of the Gospel, we don’t have to be idle as we wait. We can be active agents of healing change for our world.  Alternately or simultaneously, we can be passive agents, waiting for the Spirit to work healing in and for us. In acting, we are being Christ’s hands and feet for the good of the world. In the passive stance, we are opening up and inviting the healing and peace of Christ to transform us.  So, in essence, the story of Job tells us is that God doesn’t cause our pain nor does our pain last forever but even when we question God, are angry with God, God’s love does endure forever. 

I close with two reminders from scripture: the first is from today’s Psalm, "the Lord heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds; and the second reminder is from Isaiah chapter 40 vs 31, "those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."

Please share your thoughts


[i] Brown, Camille Lewis. African Saints, African Stories: 40 Holy Men and Women. Cincinnati, Ohio: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2008, p. 24.

[ii] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Bakhita quoted from Dagnino, Maria Luisa (1993). Bakhita Tells Her Story. Third edition

 

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