Daily Readings Reflection for 10/1/10

Reflection on Today’s Daily Readings by Fr. Bertrand Buby, SM

Today’s Readings


Scripture: Lectionary # 459. Job 38:1,12-21.40:3-5. Psalm
139:1-3,7-8.9-10.13-14. Luke 10:13-16:
Job is confronted by God in the midst of a tempest! We,too, experience
some tempests, and they may be from God trying to tell us something about
how to improve. No one likes confrontation not even God, but since God sees
the whole drama of salvation history for humans and is concerned for
everyone of us whether we are Jewish, Christian, atheist, Muslim, etc. We
are all God's children even those who do not accept being children of God.
Job is a good example for us as he now has to listen to God. Only a
tempest could bring him to the point of not listening to his wife, to his
so called four friends--even the cocky youngster among them. Now it is
only God and Job for the rest of the book.

God's creative power and wisdom now takes over and Job is humbled and does
no longer dare to rant, rave, and philosophize about his mean condition on
a dung heap. God throttles him with the question could you have done
better than what I am telling you about all of creation that was the work
of my hands? Job remains silent and humbled and this is very wise of
him--finally! Job has put his hands to his mouth and continues to listen.
His type of wisdom is human, limited, and down to earth. He does not see or
understand the bigger picture that God is putting before him in and through
the confrontation.

Then our liturgy gives us a bit of respite from the tour-de-force of God's
words to Job as we chant the response and listen to several verses of the
wisdom Psalm 139--one of the greatest reflections on human origins and the
beauty of God allowing us to share as co-creators in giving birth to a
child. Job has never gone back to mentioning his mother--that was a big
mistake, but now the psalmist does reflect on how wondrously he is being
made in his mother's womb and then comes to light and starts to grow into
the fulness of life picking up some wisdom along the way. The psalm is
really a biblical support for the Right to Life. Job wanted to curse the
day he was born and yet he had not asked his mother if he should do this.
He was good but plane dumb. Through this Psalm we can pray for an end to
abortions and we can thank God that we were not aborted that our mothers
and fathers were open to God's mystery of giving them children and life to
help those children learn the ways of human and divine wisdom.

Our own efforts in life should be the dynamism that we bring to our world
each morning we wake up. We always are growing in all dimensions of life
and the spiritual area is central to praising God and keeping ourselves
going in a world that is becoming a tempest like Job experienced yet God is
there speaking to us no matter what our beliefs are. We all are God's
children whether we like it or not or buy into it. It is a truth and a
fact.

Wisdom literature tells us that the happy and fortunate person is the one
who is content with her or his lot in live. Are we? Do we complain like
Job? Do we listen to our so called four friends as Job did? This final
thought coming near the end of our reflection on Job is said in the
synagogue for morning prayer: "Praised are you, O Lord our God, King of the
universe, who gave understanding to the rooster to distinguish between day
and night." (Berakoth 60 b.) We are being informed by verse 38 of our
reading from Job to recite a morning prayer similar to that one as we hear
the crowing of the rooster." Or of our alarm clock. Some of which do have
a rooster's crowing. Good day! Amen.