Saturday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time
All week we have been hearing the familiar story of Job—the one who loses everything and calls upon God for answers. God’s answer to Job is a three chapter long assertion of His power over everything, which illustrates how God’s ways are not the ways of humans. In today’s first reading we see Job’s response to God’s speech. Let us note the profound humility with which Job responds to God. Confronted with the utter majesty of God, Job realizes that he does not know and cannot do all that God knows and does, therefore he respectfully withdraws his challenges to God (Jb 42:2-6). Job recognizes his ultimate dependence upon God for everything, even his very being.
The disciples who return to Jesus in today’s gospel reading are astonished at what they’ve been able to accomplish, not on their own accord, but “because of [Jesus’] name” (Lk 10:17). Because they have been like children (Lk 17:21), that is utterly dependent upon God rather than over-confident in their own abilities, they have come to understand the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.
By and large when we think about dependence as a culture, we think of it as a negative: it’s not good to be dependent upon one’s parents, one’s spouse, one’s community…etc. Rather, we extol independence as among our chief societal virtues. Job sees that he cannot even comprehend the extent of his dependence upon God!!! If all of us—no matter how hard we work—are ultimately radically dependent upon God, aren’t we called all the more radically to lay down our lives for others as did Christ on the cross? Aren’t we all completely dependent upon God for everything we have, everything we do, and everything we offer? Aren’t we called to forget about the amount of work that I put in and to fight for a preferential option for the poor? Now that’s a challenge!
- Tim Gabriella