5th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Cycle B
February 7, 2021
Saint Mary Parish, Pylesville 8am
Our Lady of Grace Parish, Parkton 11am
“I Can Have Complaints”
One day back in the 1970’s, before the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, a Hungarian man went to the police station in Budapest; he was seeking permission to emigrate to Western Europe.
The officer asked, “Aren’t you happy here?” The Hungarian replied, “I have no complaints.”
Again, the officer asked, “Are you dissatisfied with your work?” And again, the man replied, “I have no complaints.”
Once more the officer asked, “Are you dissatisfied with your living conditions?” And once more the Hungarian replied, “I have no complaints.”
Finally, the officer asked, “Then, why do you want to go to the West?” And the man replied, “Because there, I can have complaints.”
Job’s and Our Sufferings
That story helps us to get into today’s first reading.
This book is about a man named Job who is something like a lot of us. He has a pretty good job and is living comfortably.
Job and his wife are happily married and are blessed with children. But then, it all falls apart.
Job loses his business and goes into bankruptcy. His children are killed, his wife dies, and Job himself contracts a chronic, painful disease.
And all of this happens quickly, one thing right after another. As individuals, we may not have experienced all of these sufferings, but the truth is that suffering touches each one of us.
Maybe we know that especially in these days. Covid or other sicknesses, the death of a loved one, an addiction, emotional, financial or family problems – sufferings like these can affect all of us.
Job’s and Our Complaints
In our Old Testament story, Job is something like that man in Budapest.
He has complaints and he complains to God. “Why? Why is this happening to me?”
Some of Job’s friends tell him that his sufferings are there because God is 1) testing his faith or 2) punishing him for sin. Job will not accept these traditional, standard explanations.
He cannot believe that the good, loving God would inflict such evil 1) either as a test 2) or as a punishment. And beyond that, Job knows that he has been living a good and not a sinful life and doesn’t deserve punishment.
So, what happens? God eventually speaks to Job and asks him two questions.
“Do you have the power that I have? And do you have the wisdom that I have?”
Job gets the point. He realizes that God’s power and wisdom far surpass his own.
Job realizes that God is a mystery, that human life is a mystery, and that suffering is a mystery. With trust in God, he begins to accept his suffering as the mystery that it is.
An Invaluable Lesson
This story is as alive for us today as it was for Job.
For a long time, Job seeks understanding through reason. He keeps asking “Why?” and gets no satisfactory answer.
The change comes when God guides Job to seek understanding or acceptance through faith. Only then does Job gain some inner peace by entrusting himself to the mystery of God.
Today, we are a bit more fortunate than Job because Jesus has shed a bit more light on the mystery of suffering. This additional light is summed up in two sentences from St. Paul.
Paul says, “The sufferings of the present cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed.” In other words, there is no guarantee of fairness on this earth.
But there is a guarantee of fairness in resurrected life with God. That is a new and major insight.
And then Paul also says, “In my flesh I make up what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings.” Paul’s point is that Jesus begins the process of salvation through his suffering.
Now we can join our sufferings to his. We can allow them to be redemptive in some way and to contribute to the salvation of ourselves and our world.
These additional insights do not remove suffering or its mystery. But they do give our suffering some purpose and help us deal with it as persons of faith.
