DRUDGERY OR DELIGHT?
5th Sunday Year B
February 8, 2015
DRUDGERY OR DELIGHT?
Tension is the closest word I can find with regards to
today’s readings. The opening salvo comes from Job, who is not exactly silent
about his plaints and pleadings with the Lord, if not, complaints: “Is not
man’s life on earth a drudgery?”
Take it from the news we have been hearing of late. Attacks
here and there ... Terrorism everywhere ... Corruption unabated in our beloved
country and beyond ... Fake surveys from outfits that have a lot to gain – and
lose, for that matter – should the winds of change blow our way. Grinding
poverty for more and more people … sore lack of education for millions and
millions … The list is tedious. Do we have anything right now to disprove Job
and dispute his “survey findings?”
Well, I do … Today’s readings do! And here is where the
tension lies. Here is where the capacity to see beyond what we actually see –
as part of the fabled Catholic, Christian imagination, finds its most potent
antidote to the very real “drudgery,” drivel, and even death.
Just look at the readings … After drooling on Job’s drivel
of complaints, we hear the psalmist, and we chimed in, in fact: “Praise the
Lord, who heals the brokenhearted.”
So, what’s the real score? What is really happening in the
world? Is there hope for the families of those 44 SAF policemen who were
brutally massacred from dawn to dusk two Sundays back?
These questions, at bottom, are no different from the
question of Glydel, the young girl who asked the Holy Father, Pope Francis in
Manila just a few weeks ago: “Why should children suffer so much?”
The Catholic imagination, born of centuries of reflection on
God’s Word, has no answer to the problem of pain and suffering – drudgery, if
you will! It only offers a model, an image, a prototype … The Church can only
offer us the image of Christ, who Himself, while undeserving of it all, had to
suffer so much, and die in the hands of cruel tormentors.
Yes, God and His Church, founded precisely on, and nourished
by the blood of Christ, His Son can only offer a Way, a journey, towards a
destination that cannot be mathematically and scientifically defined. Its
dimensions are not of the here and the now. It is a reality in three
dimensions: the here, the now, and the hereafter – the forever!
Here now is the delight that today’s Good News brings for
our consideration. What it basically says is that we are called to live our
lives in a three-dimensional manner. If we see only the “restlessness until the
dawn,” the experiential truth that “I shall not see happiness again,” we live
in only two dimensions: here and now.
Today, no less than the Lord shows us the essence of this
Catholic imagination … After being hated and despised in pagan territory, where
he could not do too many wonders on account of people’s rejection, Jesus came
to the house of Peter. There, too, was the proverbial drudgery … Peter’s
mother-in-law lay in bed with a fever. This is the classical human condition –
what philosophers call “existential pain” – the very object of Glydel’s
question – the very reality that makes our lives a daily drudgery!
But this is where the delight also comes in. Jesus is
savior. Jesus is healer. Jesus is Lord. “They brought to him all who were ill
or possessed by demons.” And he did not ignore them. He did not look the other
way. Yes … he even proceeded to do Peter a favor by curing his mother-in-law!
(I am not sure, though, whether Peter was happy about it!)
His actions were prophetic, not just therapeutic. After all
the wonders and healings and miracles, he sought refuge in something that
usually does not offer delight - the
desert! That was where he prayed!
Job’s drudgeries and our disappointments now find their
proper place – in the desert of delight! – the ultimate sign of tension in any
Catholic Christian’s heart. We suffer. By believing, suffering will not and
does not necessarily end. But by going to the desert of delight in personal and
communal prayer of faith, we find meaning. We find reason to believe and still
belong, despite the drudgery.
For God “heals the broken-hearted,” and His Son Jesus Christ
“took away our infirmities and bore our diseases.”
Disappointed? Try going to the desert!
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