The Book of Job

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Well, good evening. Welcome to this Bible study. um My name is complicated. I'm mostly known as Najee, Najee Mawad, although some of you might know me as Michael, but I'm not going to go there. I've been uh teaching scripture for almost 20 years, mostly at St. Ephraim, Maronite Catholic Church. I happen to be a Maronite. And tonight we're going to cover the Book of Job.

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We'll do that in four lectures. Following, we'll get into the Gospel of St. John. And now we'll probably take us about 15 lectures to cover.

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How many of you have read or know anything about Job, show of hand, just so can get a sense? Good, very good. Excellent. Excellent, very good. So let's go through some administrative.

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I obviously want to thank Father Soroki and the crew at OMS, particularly Maria, for allowing us to have this Bible study here. That is very generous of them. And I'm going to talk to a little bit about the schedule. Like I said, it's a Bible study in four parts. And today we'll cover the beginning of this drama, and then we'll go through the trial of friendship, the voice from the whirlwind, and restoration.

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The Book of Job is 42 chapters, so in most of the lectures I will not be going verse by verse. Today is the exception. But I will be presenting you specific passages that illustrate the point that I think are key to this book. The format, usually 55 minutes, although I'm not very good keeping time, so I'm warning you upfront. We'll take a five-minute break and then be Q &A after.

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My target audience is always Catholics, adults. Children can, you can bring your children at your discretion, but I'm targeting it to Catholics or adults. It doesn't mean that you have to be Catholic, I just want you to understand where my focus is. So at least you will know where I'm coming from. My style is direct, it's a two by four. I'm not very good with niceties, which is a miracle because...

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People keep coming. Don't ask me why. I detest ambiguity. I address Catholic living. My intention is not to form theologians, but to help us better live the Catholic faith. And when I say you, I mean you. I don't mean we, I mean you. My point is to talk to you, not to me. I can do that at home in front of a mirror.

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And I'll warn you, I tend to meander. A thought will come to mind and I'll just follow it. So please be patient. What to bring? Bring your Bible. I use the RSCVCE, which is the uh translation of the scripture that is Catholic and that stick very close to the literal meaning. Bring a notepad and a pen, some water, and if you feel like it, you can donate some cookies for the people who are going to be here with you.

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You can phone your questions during the talk. I'll leave that up. This is a QR code. It will lead you to a little page where you can ask questions. I do it this way so as not to interrupt the flow as I'm doing the presentation. And I will go through these questions afterwards. um If you don't want to go through the QR code, it's pretty easy. You can open it to slido.com.

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And then right on top, just write Job 01 and it will take you to that page either way. Here are some, these are references that I use for this study. I'd like to share it with you. So in case you feel like reading them yourselves, please absolutely feel free to do so. Gustavo Guideres on Job is a very short book written by Dominican priest who lived in Latin America and who contended with extreme poverty.

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And he comes to at this book from that angle, the suffering of the poor. Very good reflection, quite a bit to learn from. Ancient Christian commentary on scripture is a heady series where they, they essentially combine together the teachings of the fathers on specific topics. And it's a good reference material for the book of Job. St. Thomas hasn't written many

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literary commentaries on the scripture. They're quite a bit on the spiritual side, but not on literary commentary. That's, I think, the only one he wrote, which is a literary commentary on the Book of Job. And then in the Consulamini commentary series, that's a commentary on Job by St. Gregory the Great, although it is not on the literal meaning, it's on the spiritual meaning. It's a classic on the topic of the Book of Job.

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So I struggled figuring out how to best present this over to you. And I decided not to present the notes because I don't want the notes to be fighting with me. As soon as I put the notes on on the, on, on screen, your eyes are going to go there, read this and you're not going to be listening to what I'm saying. So I don't want that. However, when, um, if you go back and either listen to the talk in audio or video mode, you will see an attachment.

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to a PDF of the deck and it will have all the notes. So all the notes that you will hear me mention, most of them will be present already on the link. So there's nothing that will be lost when you look at it. Now, if you don't mind, I'd to ask you to stand up and we can start with a word of prayer. In the name the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, amen. Together, come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.

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sent forth your spirit and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit, we may be truly wise and ever enjoy his constellations through Christ our Lord, amen. In the of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Please be seated. So what are we going to cover today?

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We're going to go straight up to the heart of the matter of the Book of Job. What is this book about? Then we'll talk about who Job was or is. And we'll get through essentially chapter one and chapter two up to verse 10, which deal with the test that God subjected him to. That would be the focus of this talk today.

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heart of the matter. Like I said, what I want to communicate to you is something that you could use in your own lives. I'm not interested in deep theological thoughts for theology's purpose. And when I read a book, whether it be Revelation or Joe or any other one, the first question I ask myself is, what is the point of this book? There's one thing you need to remember. What would that be? And I'd like to start with this upfront.

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and you will see me repeat it. Eventually, I hope by the time we're done, that will stick and it will help you when you're dealing with suffering or pain, yours or someone else's. So what is the heart of the matter? First, I need to define one concept. This is the silver thread tying the entire scripture beginning to end.

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That is the notion of a covenant. I don't have time tonight to go into details about what the covenant is, so I'll give you the digest, the summary's digest of it. And it might shock you because most likely you may never have heard this before. A covenant is an agreement between a strong party and a weak party. So marriage is a covenant. Marriage is a covenant.

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which means marriage is an agreement between a strong party and a weak party. Some of you might be thinking that I'm implying that the man is a strong party and the woman is a weak party. But that's not at all the case. The man and the woman are the weak party. God is the strong party.

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God or the strong party spells the conditions that the weak party must obey. Must.

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There is no choice here. You must. If the weak party is faithful to the covenant, the strong party blesses them. And if the weak party is unfaithful to the covenant, the strong party curses them.

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That is the principal way with which God deals with us. If you are surprised, if you're shocked hearing me say that God curses, then what I would recommend you do in this case,

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I have another QR code, another link to a study I made called the Catholic Foundation Library. This is a library that covers a whole host of topics that I believe Catholics should know about, which is not very commonly taught. And in here I have six lectures on the covenant. I suggest you take a listen.

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Here are the five major covenants of the Old Testament. And then in each one of those, there are blessings and there curses. And then in the New Testament, the Lord himself, Lord Jesus, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, spells out the blessings and the curses.

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This is a fundamental concept that plays a very significant role in the book of Job and I'll show you in a minute why. Now Job, the story of Job is about suffering.

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It is the entry to all books of wisdom in the scripture. When you get to the part of scripture that deals with wisdom, the first book of Job. Why? Well, because if

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I put on the y-axis wickedness and innocence and on the x-axis suffering to bliss. So wickedness to innocence is a moral perspective. They deal with vices and virtues. Suffering and bliss is a subjective experience that we all go through. When you look at these things and you divide this into a quadrant, you get this.

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God's perfect will for those who are wicked, His perfect will is that if you're wicked, you're punished with pain.

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That is his perfect will. That's what he wants. And in most cases, he wants that for your salvation. Now, guess what? How many? Do we have parents here? Do we have parents with kids? Show of hands. Okay. If you're a parent, you have kids, you can understand that. Right? You're sitting in the living room and you watch your toddler or your six-year-old walk by and there's chocolate smeared all over his face.

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And you ask him, where were you? And he goes, nowhere. I was in my room. What did you do? Nothing.

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So what are you dealing with? You're dealing with somebody who breaking the covenant. He's lying and he's being disrespectful. Now you know that for the betterment of the child you need to deal with that and punishment must ensue, whatever the punishment is. That structure that you have in your family, that's a mirror of the way God deals with us, no different. Now in most cases you do it so that the child can be

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to understand the errors of their ways and be well formed. You want their happiness. But if the child is obdurate, refuses to learn as they grow up, well, you know where that's going to lead.

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But that's perfect when you're wicked and you suffer. Morally, we have no issues with that. We may find it sad, we may be upset, we may have sorrow, but in a reasonable level, we understand that. We have no issues with that bit. Conversely, we have people who are wicked and yet are happy.

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That is God's permissive will, He allows that.

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wicked you might experience bliss. You may be happy in this life. It happens. That is His permissive will. We don't exactly know why, but He allows it. Likewise, God's permissive will is that if you are innocent and you suffer, that can also happen. And even though we have trouble with, we can still understand that.

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And the last one obviously is that God's perfect will, if you're innocent, you're rewarded with bliss. Now, even if you've never thought about that, that framework is built in. The reason why I can say that with some level of confidence is because the question of if God is all good, where is there suffering? You're basically talking about that framework. That's what is something interesting, that framework here. But the Book of Job is not about that.

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about something a little harder to deal with.

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Before I move, there is the sense of justice demands proportionality, meaning that your suffering should be proportional to your wickedness and your bliss should be proportional to your innocence. Right? And we understand that. You understand that as well. Right? It's a natural thing that we come up with. Nevertheless, this is not what the book of Job is about. Before I can tell you what it is about, I need to now insert the covenant that I told you about a minute ago.

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Like I said, the covenant has blessings and curses. How do they translate? Well, the blessings map to God's perfect will. If you're innocent, meaning you are faithful to the covenant, you will be blessed and you will be happy. And if you are, um if you aren't faithful to the covenant, then the curses leads you to pain. Okay.

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You can see it coming down this way because this is what God said repeatedly in the scriptures in Old Testament, New Testament. But the one thing I warn you against, and that's important because we're going to get into that in a second lecture when the three friends come and talk to him, is to try to reverse engineer. Reverse engineer is an expression came from computer science and engineering in general, where without getting into technicality,

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Suppose you walk into a room and somebody decided to write something in hieroglyphs, Egyptian hieroglyphs. You want to know what they wrote. So you decipher from the hieroglyphs, the English meaning. You are reverse engineering, meaning you're going back from what you have to the source. Okay. That's what the notion of reverse engineering means. But I will warn you not to reverse engineer God's will.

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from somebody's state. You can't look at someone who seems to have it all and think, oh, that means God is blessing that person. Nor could you, looking at somebody's suffering, say, oh, God is cursing that person. Now, in some cases, it's pretty clear, because we're very predictable, repeatable, and our sins are boring.

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It doesn't take much if you know someone who drinks every day consistently lots and lots of alcohol. You won't be surprised if that person ends with a liver problem. It doesn't take a profit to tell you that. Nor would it take a profit to tell you if somebody is eating sugar too much, not exercising, they might end up with it being diabetic. That is also

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Not surprising, so in many situations, whether on the physical level or the moral level, we can ascertain with some level of confidence the reason why someone is in some state. So on the moral level, the one that is very common, unfortunately it's very sad, but it's very common, is people who end up being alone.

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And I'm not saying this is true of all the people who end up being alone, but in many, many cases, these are the people who contracepted when they were younger, either refused to have kids or had only one or two kids. Contraception is a grave matter. It's a breach of the covenant. As a result, children, in many cases, grow up distant and disrespectful, go their ways, and the parent end up alone. So if you can't accept...

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and you end up there, I am not very surprised. I'm not happy about it, but I'm not surprised. Nevertheless, I would not say by looking at a person who is alone, I will never allow myself to conclude, oh, that is because they did this or that or the other. Judgment is God's, not mine. So the point I want to re-emphasize is even though there is a covenant, even though God made it very clear what his intentions are,

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Me not being God has no right to look at somebody and conclude this or that, whether for good or ill.

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That is very important and we'll see it as a theme in the Book of Job because that's what the three friends do.

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And many of us tend to do that, especially when we feel slighted. Especially when we feel an injustice has been committed against us. This thing wears its ugly head.

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And we'll talk more about that. Here's Job's key question. Is it possible for God to will the suffering of the innocent?

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We're not talking about accidental suffering. We're not talking about something that God doesn't want. We're talking about God willing the suffering of the innocent.

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That's what the Book of Job is contending with. From this question, you can immediately infer that the Book of Job is a prefiguration of Christ. Because to this question, the answer is resounding yes. God the Father willed the suffering of the one who was most innocent. We know that from the Garden in Gethsemane when Christ prayed and asked his father,

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that this cup passes him by, but then he added, not my will, but your will. And so God's, the Father's perfect will was done and Christ died on the cross.

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Now, at this juncture, many of us become Protestant.

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You see there's something very nice about, very comforting about the Protestant faith, which is that Christ died on the cross to save us. All I need to do is take Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. By the way, these words are nowhere found in the scripture. Nowhere. And I'm saved. What does that mean? It means I don't have to be on the cross.

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Think of it this way. If we were standing at the foot of the cross.

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watching Jesus die, we would be in the Pharisee's camp. Come down from the cross and we believe in you. Anything but the cross.

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You might think that I'm exaggerating because after all we all go to church, we all pray. Which means we have the virtue of piety. Piety being the virtue which is under the heading of justice and it allows us to give God his due. That's what piety is. But piety is not necessarily honesty. It is not modesty. It is not obedience.

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You need these other things to contend with suffering and accept it.

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That is the question that the book of Job asks. And it involves three things. Providence. God's providence is throughout the entire book. He's the one who directs the entire action of the book. Beginning to end. What does that mean? It's not the problem that we're facing, the difficulty we're having isn't with the devil, not with the Job's friends. None of that. Our problem is directly with God. That is exactly what Job will say at one point.

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He wants to talk to God. He wants to contend with Him. He wants to know why. At least Job knew that he is dealing with God. So are we. At the end of the day, whatever is happening today, whatever is happening yesterday, if there's anything that happened which caused you sorrow, which caused you to say why, which caused you to question,

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Your job is to turn and say to God, why?

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Providence directs everything.

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Innocence. Job's innocence is clearly laid out. In this case, what I mean by innocent, I do not mean someone who is free from all sins. I mean someone

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who under the heading of justice does not deserve the fate that he suffers because of some action he performed. So for instance, if I steal money and I'm put in jail, that is justice. I wasn't innocent of the crime. But in case of Job, he is.

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So God's providence.

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wants an innocent to suffer. God's providence might want you to suffer.

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or would be a response to that?

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The third one is deception.

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Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. So there will be people who betray someone. There will be people who will blind sight someone. There will be people who will take advantage of a situation. That's par for the course. But here is the trick. If you find someone who betrays you or harms you or pains you, you might focus all your attention on them.

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And that becomes a distraction. Because at the end of the day, it is God who permitted that to happen. And your business should be with God, not with anybody else.

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Alright, now let's get a little closer. Who's Joe?

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This is a shrine in the mountains of Lebanon.

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where the tomb of Job is located.

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Most people don't know about this. Most of the books I read never mention it. It is maintained by the Druze community and they have a great devotion to the Prophet Job as is known. And there are thousands of people every year who go there in pilgrimage to essentially pray at his tomb. What you see here is the tomb of, allegedly the tomb of the Prophet Job. of it is in, I mean, we haven't...

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open it up or whatever, but that's their um consistent belief that this is, that after what happened to him, he went to um the stone and it was there that his wife helped him heal.

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I am flashing this out because there is always a question about the veracity of the historicity of the book whether um we're talking about a real individual or we're talking about just a story. Particularly because of the beginnings which confuse a lot of people. Satan going and talking to God, that sort of thing. So I'm just doing this to show you that there is physical evidence that he actually existed. Job was not an Israelite.

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He was a Gentile.

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However, the best from the best sources that I have, St. Thomas and Gregory and other fathers, the understanding is the author of the book is Moses. The reason why we think this is so is because Job, as you will see in a minute, offered sacrifices to God on behalf of his children. Now, sacrifices were forbidden

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When the Israelites crossed into Sinai and they committed the sin of the golden calf, God forbade them from offering sacrifices and restricted only to the Leviticus priesthood. So the fact that you have a man who can wake up in the morning and decide to offer sacrifice to God as a common thing, make us think that this whole event took place before this interdict hit.

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So uh he was uh not an Israelite. And that tells us that God's providence was always at work in the world, not just with the Israelites, but across the board. Now the Israelites were the chosen people. But there is a misconception. Chosen doesn't mean preferred. Chosen means chosen for a mission, for something to do. And their mission was to bring all the other nations to God. And the reason why they were chosen,

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is really simple actually because it's genealogical. They were the firstborn. If you follow the track of the firstborn in the genealogies, starting with Adam and Eve and all the way down, going through Eber and the six generations down, you go to Abraham, Abraham and then Isaac and Jacob, et cetera, you can see that there is a line of the firstborn on the spiritual side and this is who they are. They were the firstborn among all nations in their job. They were chosen therefore as the firstborn.

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to bring all their brethren back to God. That's what the chosen people were. Therefore, God never abandons anyone and His providence extended over the entire earth and worked in some cases in the lives of people who were Gentiles to raise them to a level of holiness which is astounding and Job is one of them. In the scripture, in chapter 14, the book of Ezekiel,

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Prophet Ezekiel mentions Job next to Noah and Daniel whom we know were also historical figures. And so there is no reason for us to doubt that Job is actually somebody who is in heaven and hopefully one day we'll meet him. Incidentally, my entire purpose of this study here isn't to you, to acquaint you with the book of Job. I want to acquaint you with Job. I'm hoping that by the end you will have developed a devotion to this man.

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because it's worth it. And then likewise in the book of in the letter of St. James, he speaks of you have heard of the steadfastness of Job and he speaks of him as a person. So there is no reason for us to doubt that he was a historical person. Okay. Let's begin Job 1 13. mean one Job chapter one verse one through three. is Job? Was a man in land of ooze

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whose name was Job, and the man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the East. Notice the structure of these three verses.

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The introduction of Zhou begins with his virtues.

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Doesn't tell us anything about how tall he was, how good looking he was, whether he exercised, ran marathons, virtues. The root of the word virtue, v-i-r in Latin means man.

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As I said in my series on marriage, there are two common mistakes these days where people get married for the wrong reasons. Common mistakes is that you do not get married hoping that your spouse will make you happy. Nobody can make you happy.

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Happiness is the flowering of virtues. It's the result of virtues.

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So he starts with the virtues and then the third bit, he had 7,000 sheep, 3000 camels, etc. Speaks of his competency. So a man of God, a woman of God is virtuous and competent. Those are the two things you need to be happy. To be whole. And you can see those being presented straight away and signers in between are the blessings. And the reason why the

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The sacred author did it this way because he doesn't want you to think one bit that the blessings of God are related to competency. They're relating to virtues. So even if you're not competent, in other words, it's better to be virtuous than being competent. It's better to be both. You have to choose, choose the first.

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On the subject of virtues, virtues are what God expects you to develop. Virtues are the precious stones which will be fitted on your crown of glory in heaven. Your virtues. Virtues are the only thing you can take with you.

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You can go to mass every day, can say the rosary every day, and you can end up in heaven. Because these are means to grow in virtue. This is like the energy, the gas you put in your tank, but if you don't go anywhere, you've gone nowhere. It's useless, it's wasted. So, when you go home tonight, get yourself a list of virtues and vices.

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and then look at them and ask yourself this simple question, which are the three top vices I have, which are the three top virtues I need to work on? If you're married, wonderful, ask your spouse. They'll be very happy to tell you.

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You go and ask them, honey, what do think I should be working on? And if you're one answering the question, no more than three, hopefully one. I'll give you an example. Let's say you are not disciplined. You notice you're not disciplined. What does that mean? You're slothful. That's the vice. So you want to develop discipline. You don't develop discipline by suddenly deciding that you are going to go and fix the city.

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You do that by saying, okay, every morning when I wake up, I'll make my bed. Now you're being realistic, you're being humble, and you're being truthful. You make your bed. That is the most beautiful prayer you can offer our Lord.

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That, Virtues.

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Work on them.

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Now, Jogue.

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had 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 she-asses, very many servants, seven and three, seven is the number of the covenant, right? And three is a number of completion. I forgot exactly what it was. I have it in notes, but I want to go back. I don't want to go there. What I wanted to tell you is that if you sit down and do an estimate of what his net worth was back then in modern terms,

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It would be probably between 30 to 300 million dollars. And this is not, this is not, these are not assets. There are digital. We're not talking about stocks here. We're talking about real things that exist. What is the point? The point is that his wealth affected the lives of many. There were many who benefited from this wealth and therefore there would be many

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who will suffer when it's lost.

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That is key to understanding where the three friends are coming from. And we'll get into that.

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His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each on his day, and they would send an invite and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus Job did continue." Okay.

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What is one of the greatest blessing God can give you in your family? It is unmerited. We don't merit it. Always one of the greatest blessing, concord and peace between the children and the parents. If you live in a household where you have had nothing but peaceful Christmases, count yourself blessed.

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To many, Christmas is a very difficult period.

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If you're not aware of it, give glory to God that he gave you this blessing.

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If your children are close to you and if your children can come to you and ask you anything, any question.

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yourself blessed. It's a blessing that God gives you because he wants that for all the families. And as long as you are faithful to the covenant and doing everything you can, you keep the doors of his blessings open. Again, it doesn't mean that if this is not happening you weren't faithful to the covenant. I repeat myself every single time. No judgment here. Saying what are we supposed to do? We're supposed to the faithful little covenant, trusting God.

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and let him work through us to reach all the members of the family. The way he does it is on him. At least we are doing our bit. Job was doing that. God blessed him in this way. You can see there was concord and unity between the brothers and the sisters and they would get together and have a good time and shared that good time among themselves.

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Now, if you're a father...

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This is where you should learn from Job.

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And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus Job did continually.

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It's the sacrificial love of a father.

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You must sacrifice for your children.

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as a father.

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You must bless them and you must sacrifice for them.

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What that sacrifice is, is up to you. And no, I'm not talking about just working long hours.

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I'm not talking about just doing your duty. I'm talking about something you willingly sacrifice for them.

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If you're not doing that, you're missing on the graces that God wished to give you. Because when you do that, when Job did that, he was doing what? He was reflecting the love of God the Father. He was being made in the image of God the Father. So in that sense, Job is also a prefiguration of St. Joseph.

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Now I'm not saying that a mother should not also sacrifice. Obviously she does. My point is this. I take scripture as data. I don't question scripture. I just try to understand what scripture is telling us. Nor in the scripture do we see that said of a mother.

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So doesn't look like it is required of her in the same way as it is required of the father. Which is why I'm pointing it out to dads. When he does that, he doesn't go and talk to them about it. He just does it.

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You can see the reverence that Job had towards God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You can see it right here. He had reverence towards God. He had wisdom to understand that these are young people and they could sin. And he had charity in his heart towards them where he decided to take that on himself, upon himself, so that

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God would forgive them.

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If you're a father, do likewise.

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Now, Job, you notice, is a man of integrity. He's a man of virtues. He's a man with competency. He's wealthy. He conducted his affairs very well. And now many in this community depend on him. Here's the point of caution I want to introduce at this moment.

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The

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The trial that Job went through was given to a man who had a sane or a sound inner constitution. That was not a man who had suffered from trauma. That was not a man who was dealing with depression or any other mental issues. So everything I'm to be saying is predicated on this.

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If someone is struggling with trauma, struggling with interior difficulties, mental issues, he's in a very different space than where Job was.

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And if, as I am talking, if you have, if I'm saying things that are confusing you from a psychological standpoint, please ask questions. But that's the angle. The church teaches us that grace builds on nature.

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um I know kids whose parents have divorced and those kids don't go to church. I'm not surprised and I don't try to force them to go to church. These are wounded children and grace must build on nature. They need time to heal. So,

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In this world where there is a lot of wounded people, I want to be careful as I'm talking about this book. I would say to you that if you know someone who is, who suffered from trauma, that is not the book to read. I wouldn't advise them to get into Job. All right. This assumes some level of um strength and inner peace.

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to be able to go through a book like this one. All right, that's all I'll say about this. Let's move on.

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The roadmap of trial testing, four things are going to happen. First, there is a heavenly court where angels and demons present themselves before God.

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Hmm.

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I don't know how I wrote that.

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Um, that was wrong word. Possession is not what I was thinking of. have no idea what that must be PowerPoint. It's it's mistake. I have nothing to do with it. So first Satan challenges Job's motives and God permits testing of Job. Okay. Then earthly disaster hits. Job loses everything. There's a round two where Satan demands more. God allows bodily affliction, but tells Satan to spare.

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Job's life. And then we end with Job is struck physically and tempted by despair, but remains faithful. Those are the four stages of this test.

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Let's go through them. The heavenly challenge. Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, whence have you come? Satan answered the Lord from going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it. And the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil?

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And Satan answered the Lord, Does Job fear God for naught? Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the Lord said to Satan,

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Behold, all that he has is in your power, only upon himself do not put forth your hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.

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Alright, first bit that is worth noting in this passage is that the angels manage the universe on God's behalf and the demons interfere.

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Satan appears before God not in the beatific vision but as a subject under God's sovereignty. Providence covers everything.

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Also, the text here might suggest that there's a big hall, God is sitting on a throne and all the demons and angels show up. But that's not consistent with proper theology because Satan is in a different place. He has no access to the beatific visions. The angels do. And therefore you should think more about it in terms of God's ability to see what every angel and demon is doing.

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and to call them to account. It is the sovereignty and it's the dominion of providence that is being expressed here.

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So the interesting thing about this is modern materialism ignores angelic and demonic influence. What do I mean by that? If you think about the best understanding on the scientific side that we have of the universe, the Big Bang Theory, it would sound as if, it sounds as if, you know, there was just laws of nature and things evolved and developed and they're all. And that's it. Well, science has to do that because the science's point of view is the material universe. So...

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There's nothing wrong with that. It gives us an accurate account, but it is truncated. From a Catholic standpoint, a spiritual standpoint, when you factor in angels and demons, it's best to think about the way the universe has evolved and how things happen on earth as a crime scene. I mean, if you put yourself in the, and I'm not saying you should, but if you put yourself in the feet of someone like Satan who hated creation,

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Do you think you would just fiddle your thumb for 14 billion years before you decide, ah, I want to try to mess around with it? That makes no sense. He started messing around with it since the very beginning. And if you start to factor their action in, then some of what happened might make a little bit more sense. m

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So for instance, the existence of the dinosaurs blocked the flourishing of human beings for hundreds of thousands of years.

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Am I claiming that this is exactly how it happened? No. I don't know. But it makes me think that there are agencies intervening, trying to thwart or destroy the world as we know it. So whether it's physically or emotionally or spiritually, they are interfering. But it's providence that allows them to interfere.

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The challenge. So heavenly scenes unfold, God questions Satan, and now observes Satan's evasive answer. Whence have you come? Answer. From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it. He answers like a politician. The answer is accurate and utterly useless. Doesn't tell you anything while being accurate or being

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honest chug we say.

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This sort of reminds us of what the Lord teaches us in the scripture.

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Um, when he says in Matthew chapter five, verse 37, but let your word be yes, yes, no, no, anything more than this comes from evil. So what does it mean? Yes, yes, no, no. It means be accountable. Be accountable. Did you eat that piece of cake? I don't know.

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Yes, I ate the piece of cake. No, I didn't. Accountability is so important for maturity.

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Children are not accountable and we're okay with that. But we're not okay with grown-ups refusing to be accountable.

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How does lack of accountability manifest itself? This way, more often than not.

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Hey, when you said that I am fat, it hurt my feelings.

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Lack of accountability.

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Yeah, but you, three months ago, said I was ugly.

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Deflecting. You see that? Deflecting. Bringing something that happened in the past to not happen in present. Complete lack of accountability.

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How does accountability works? Oh, I'm so sorry, you're right. I shouldn't have said that. Let me make it up for you.

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The culture we live in doesn't want us to be accountable. Anything but accountability.

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wants us to develop rather selfishness, because accountability is really part of justice. We give someone what is owed, and also charity.

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It is charity when someone accuses of something and instead of re-deflecting, even if we don't think we did what they're accusing us of, we start by acknowledging their pain and saying, I'm really sorry that you feel this way. Let's talk about it. That's the charitable part. You observe how someone who's accountable is someone who's mature, someone who's responsible, someone who doesn't put himself first. And someone who is not accountable, act like a child.

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and we have no respect for them.

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Satan is not accountable. Hey, I went there, I came here, I did this, I did that.

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then God highlights Job. Now Job doesn't know that. Job doesn't know what God thinks of him.

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God is highlighting Job to Satan. And when you read this the first time, you might be tempted, like I was, Lord, why did you do that? Leave the guy alone.

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It's like, why would you tell a psychopath there's this family over there super happy? Have you seen them? I you just might always put a gun in his hand and send them over there. What did you do that for? You see that?

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Why did God do that? Knowing Satan, why would he do that?

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Notice the lack of accountability on Satan's part. Does he say you're right? Job is an upright man. did this, recognizing and crediting Job, what he did? No. He gaslighted him.

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Well, if he didn't put a hedge around his house and protected him and did all these things, he wouldn't do that. How many times we act like Satan? How many times we refuse to see the good? We refuse to acknowledge it? Because we want our way. How many times?

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It is very ironic and you can see that Satan is actually trying to stick it to God because he says put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has. Where was there another hedge that Satan broke through? Anyone?

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Don't mumble, sleep. Thank you, the garden. The garden. He's sticking up to God, hey.

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You didn't put a hedge around it. He's like, okay, I broke through that other hedge and I showed you that Adam and Eve would not be faithful. I'm gonna do it again. Let me break through this hedge and I'll show you it's not faithful.

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People with evil intent color other people evil.

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Think of it this way. If there is something that bugs you, if there is something that really irritates you, if there is something that angers you, most likely, more often than not, you're seeing that thing through the prism of your own sins.

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And most likely, more often than not, God had put that thing right there to reflect it back so you can see yourself and realize, oh, wait a minute, maybe I need to work on this. Let me give you an example. Um, I know I'm not patient. I know that about myself, but even when I say I'm not patient, I'm kind of easy going on myself. Right. That's a hypocrisy just built in. Why?

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Because when I'm driving on the highway...

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If some poor person decides to drive in front of me going 60 miles an hour, immediately in my head, I wish I had the ability to deploy surface-to-surface missiles and blow that car out of the waters.

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Okay, now when that happens, I have two choices. Choice number one, I can focus on that person and lay on them all the troubles of the world. You see? That is being not accountable, that is being infantile, that is being vain, that is being impatient.

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And I do that, I do that. But then, to reflect back and say, all right, what is bugging me? Why am I so impatient? What's wrong? Now I bring it back inside and I start to think about those areas I need to work on and then ask God to help me to work on that.

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And we do it without even thinking. I remember one point I went to Costco and I had a list that my wife gave me to buy stuff. And I'm walking around and I see these people stopping and looking at candy and chips and a bunch of other things. And that brought up the Pharisee in me. Because I started saying, thank you Lord. Because I'm not like these people attracted by all this food.

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Two minutes, I became a Pharisee.

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That's what he does.

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He blames Job, he accuses Job of things Job didn't do. And by the way, when you stand before your personal judgment after you die, he's going to be there. He'll be your accuser.

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Now, if you don't go frequently to confession, you're giving him ammunitions.

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If you go frequently to confession,

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Not only are your sins forgiven, but God, because He loves you, forgets them.

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Word to the wise. Become a confessional junkie. Like me.

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Work your way up until you can go every week.

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Alright.

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So Satan makes a false accusation. How does God answer? Behold, all that he has is in your power.

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That's the crux of the message. That's the crux of the entire text. This. So if you take scripture seriously, you have to start rewiring your thinking. And the thinking is... m

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Anyone could end up in a very difficult situation. But that does not mean that God doesn't love them or abandon them, nor it means that God is powerless. It simply means that that is God's will and He doesn't owe us an explanation.

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Everything that is done is done for God's glory, not ours.

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That's the message of St. Paul. For God's glory. For God's glory. He repeats it over and over and over again. For God's glory. Whatever God wants to do, He does. It's for His glory, not ours. That's where there's the rub. We want it to be for our glory.

01:00:03
If you have the tendency to do consistently prayers of petition, I'll ask you to reconsider. Prayers of petition nurse this idea of God as a Santa Claus.

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Let me write a list of all the things I want, who I want healed and who I want prayed for and who I want and I'll go to God and I present my list.

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We treat God as Santa.

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Think about the impact prayers of petition have on you. Should you stop them? I'm not suggesting that. But you should work your way to prayers of contemplation where you can sit with the scriptures and just contemplate.

01:00:53
You're not asking for anything, you're just contemplating God. You're loving God. Otherwise, it'd be like, you know, I go with my wife to the restaurant, as soon as you sit down, I whip up my list and I start telling her all the things I want her to do. Can you do, watch you do this and then the other. And once I'm done with my list, I put it away and I start eating and I never talk to her again.

01:01:16
That's how many of us treat God.

01:01:27
Like I told you, God's proper dominion is present and God does what He wants. I'm not going to read all of this, I have it here for you, but essentially in one stroke He loses everything. He loses His fortune and He loses His children and His servants. All of it is gone.

01:01:49
Think about that. What God allowed Satan to do, even though he told Satan, not touch him. He allowed Satan to kill the kids and kill the servants.

01:02:04
Answer, Job arose and rent his robe and shaved his head and fell upon the ground and worshipped. What is the proper answer to suffering? Worship.

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But again, this is not a guy who suffered from trauma when he was little. Many people who are in depression can't worship. We get that. But for those who can, that's the proper answer. You get up and you pray.

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And he said, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

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That should be a prayer on our lips continuously.

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And in all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. That is a man of faith. That is someone who had faith. God is not Santa. God is not there to give him what he wants. He is the servant of God and he will continue to worship God no matter what happens. Now it's not that simple. It's not that easy and we'll see that in the upcoming lectures.

01:03:16
So.

01:03:19
This is when he lost everything. And because we're coming to the end of the hour, I need to cut through some of those um talks and go straight up to this here. Why did God permit the death of Job's children and servants? That's the hard part.

01:03:36
That's the hard part. Why did he permit it? Not only he allowed Satan to harm him knowing full well that Satan is going to kill all these people. He can't pull God away from this. And the answer is in four parts. One, God permits but does not will evil.

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God's perfect will is not for evil to take place but he permits it because of free will.

01:04:05
As the Catechism states in 3.11, God is in no way directly or indirectly the cause of moral evil. He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and mysteriously knows how to derive good from it. The key here is that in the end, everything we do, good or ill, contributes to God's glory.

01:04:29
Nothing that is done is wasted.

01:04:37
Permission is not neglect. The fact that God allows doesn't mean he neglects. God allows evil only because he knows how to bring about a greater good from it, whether in this life or the next. Keep this image in your head. You go to a meadow, you're standing there, it's a beautiful light, there's a nice wind, it feels great. You look at this and you go, wow, it's so peaceful and beautiful, and it is. But if you could see the same meadow from the perspective of an ant living there, it's the apocalypse.

01:05:08
It is war, unceasing, unstopping. Every second, every minute, it's kill or get killed or be killed. The blades of grass are fighting to get to the sun. The trees are choking each other to get to the sun. It's war all around you. And yet that same violence that is unceasing produces this sense of peace.

01:05:33
And I believe it's the same with our world. We get taken away by all the violence, by all the crimes, where all the things are taking place, and this is where our sight is, but all of it is producing something absolutely magnificent we cannot see, but God does.

01:05:49
And our problem is we want it for us, not him. Our problem is we love ourselves more than we love God.

01:06:01
Okay, the service and children are not innocent casualties in God's eyes. To humanize it seems unjust. They died in a test not directed at them. But each life, each human life is known personally to God. Even the hair on your head are counted. Their lives do not end with death. Immortality, the soul and the promise of resurrection transform how we must read this.

01:06:27
children and servants are no less important than Job. In God's providence, their deaths are not meaningless. In the Book of Wisdom, chapter 3, verse 1 through 5, which we use in the funerals, the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God. In the eyes of the foolish, they seem to have died, but their hope is full of immortality. Oftentimes, we restrict pain, force us to restrict our attention to only this life, and we forget about the other one.

01:06:58
Participation in Job's suffering as typological participation in Christ. So from a typological lens, meaning types in scripture that point to Christ, Job is the figure of Christ, the innocent sufferer. Just as Christ's affected his disciples, so Job's trial affected or affects his household. His children's death, like the death of martyrs,

01:07:25
may be seen not only as tragic but also as part of redemptive narrative mysteriously ordered to the glory of God.

01:07:33
So we know only part of the story. God knows the full story and when we see it in heaven we'll rejoice. That is the faith. That is what we must hang on to. And God's justice is eschatological, meaning it will be revealed at the end times, not right now.

01:07:54
The mistake of Job's friend as we shall see is to assume all justice may be seen now. But scripture consistently points to a final judgment when the full truth of every life will be revealed and every injustice redressed. The deaths of Job's children and servants only seem unjust if we ignore eternal life and focus only on the temporal horizon.

01:08:18
The hard part is that why we might understand it here, the body and the emotions rebel. Makes it really hard to deal with these realities. And this is what the book of Job is going to go through. Okay. I think I'm over the time. So I'm going to stop here. I'll pick up around to next week and then we'll talk more about that. So what I would like to do now is, um,

01:08:48
ask you to stand, we've finished with the word of prayer. Now we'll take a quick break and we'll come back for questions. But if you need to go, may God be with you and protect you. In the of the Father, of the Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen. Lord, we want to thank you and praise you and glorify you for your glory. We want to thank you for sending forth the Holy Spirit upon us all, for every inspiration, every good thought, and every encouragement that you planted in our hearts.

01:09:18
We ask you to help us put them into effect so by growing in virtue we may grow closer to you and come to love you as your son would have want us to love you. We ask all of this to the intercession of Our Lady Mary Most Holy as we pray. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God.

01:09:47
pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. St. Joseph, all the angels and saints, the name of the Father, the Son of the Holy Spirit, Thank you for listening and then we'll take a quick break.