The initial “yes” to God is sometimes easy to say. Persisting when the various struggles come is arduous.
Illustration photo:
During the deacon practice, we spent a week in a hospital in the summer to get a little closer to the world of the sick. They are a fixed part of the priest’s care, although it is not very joyful and even the priest’s throat sometimes dries up.
Cesarean section, removal of varicose veins, skin transplantation after being scalded with stew – these are just some of the experiences that were not pleasant. Doctors also sent us to talk with patients. One of us managed to make a faux pas when he addressed the dying man by asking how the health care was useful to him… The school does not prepare for some situations.
Like Job, he is not prepared for the onslaught of “Job” messages. “My eye shall see no more happiness” is one of the weaker reproaches with which he will later litter the sky. Saint Jerome compares this book to an eel that escapes the more we try to catch it.
The job cannot be classified historically. The biblical scholar Martini speaks of a placeholder, a “laboratory model” of a righteous man who attracts evil for no reason – although he takes care of his family, makes regular sacrifices to God, and lives as an innocent. Suffering for your mistakes is understandable. But to suffer through the fault of others, their decisions, to suffer undeservedly – that’s drama.
Something of the mystery of God is revealed in Job. For example, the fact that his story is not only tied to the Jewish faith is more universal. We do not find there the theme of the covenant, the temple, Jerusalem or priestly service. The most recent Jewish biblical literature (Job, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes) brings up the theme of retribution that doesn’t work, and non-believing observers like to point this out. There is no reward for good and no punishment for evil.
The three main characters are clear: Job, God and Satan. The last one will probably surprise us. He is allowed to test a person first by touching his property. After failing, he goes further and touches the integrity of his body.
Satan, as the accuser of man (a favorite theme of Pope Francis), claims that true piety does not exist because man is incapable of selfless love. He considers it a delusion and an illusion. What the critics of religion like to say today: the deity was invented by man to defend and sublimate his own motivations, which are not altruistic.
The reader feels that he is drawn into a struggle where he can honestly admit that reproaches against God and cursing of heaven will appear even in the hearts of honest people. Simply, exams exist and will exist for everyone. That initial “yes” to God is sometimes easy to say. Persisting when the various struggles come is arduous.
“It is important not to close our eyes to the suffering of the body and even then to offer a certain spirituality with realism based on our limitations.”
Martin Luther, who threw a bottle of ink at the tempter when he was put to the test, would probably agree. When commenting on the Book of Job, he noted that perhaps God listens with more interest and without offense to the cry of the desperately ill, to the point of blasphemy, than the prayers of ordinary Christians who participate in Sunday liturgies in their comfortable lives.
So the human feeling of bitterness is not condemned by the Bible. On the contrary, it preserved it as part of an inspired sacred text.
Christian faith accepts and develops this Jewish realism. It is the religion of the body, because the human body was sanctified by God’s incarnation. It is important not to close our eyes to the suffering of the body and even then to offer a certain spirituality with realism based on our limitations. It is a spirituality of openness to a horizon that transcends human senses.
Something similar was experienced by a married couple in the pilgrimage town of Cascia, where I spent a few months assisting the local priest. The first thing Don Renzo did in the new parish was the funeral of a girl who committed suicide at a young age. His closeness to the parents who died during the period of mourning caused their faith to deepen.
Thanks to the good priest, they not only found answers to their painful questions, but later offered their qualities in preparing the betrothed before marriage. Their transformed pain seemed to become the fuel cell of the ship, which steered it into new waters of active faith in the community.
A deep cry before God saved them from a lifetime of grumbling about how cruel and unjust the world is. French philosopher Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950) experienced something similar. Benedict XVI also heard his thoughts at the bedside of his daughter, who was stricken with meningitis and later died. during one of the spiritual exercises in the Vatican.
“What would be the meaning of all this if our little girl were only a sick body, only a bit of painful life, and not, on the contrary, a white host that transcends us all, one great mystery?… We should not think of pain as something that it came to us to take, but for something that was given to us and we can give… I felt that when I approached his little bed without a voice, it was as if I approached the altar…
We wished our little Françoise to die. But isn’t it just the desire of a well-fed society? Who knows if it is not the other way around: if we have not been asked to guard and adore the guest in our midst. My little Françoise, you are the image of faith for me.”
Visitors counter: 166
