The Book of Job

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So we started this journey two weeks ago and we looked at the beginning and that drama. And tonight we're going to get into the trial of friendship. Before we proceed forward, here are a few QR codes and that shows you why I need a little bit of help. A few of them. The first one might be the one you want to capture if you're interested. It gives you a link on your phone to a site that will allow you to ask questions.

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So as I proceed to the lecture, if you have a question, can just type it in there. That'll be an easy way for me to be able to get to them afterwards. You don't have to, you can wait till the end for the QA session. The rest of those QR codes that you see here, the one on up top is for the podcast of the first lecture, and the two on the bottom are for the video. As you know, this is being streamlined live and it's recorded. And you can watch them either on Vimeo or YouTube.

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your choice. So please stand and we'll start with the word of prayer. In the name of 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. Send 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

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did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy his consolations through Christ our Lord, amen. Our Lady, Saint Joseph, all the angels and saints, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you, please be seated. So we have a pretty

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agenda for tonight. We're going to go through the second demonic temptation and then essentially follow through Job's lament and his dialogues with three of his friends. And through all of this we're going to discover

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the depth of his pain and the remarkable way with which he is able to answer. And I hope that through all of this we'll achieve two things. One, we'll have a deeper devotion to this extraordinary man. And two, learn more about how God would like us to respond to pain and suffering.

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So, let's begin with round 2.

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In the first round, when Satan went and told God that if he were to take things away from Job, he would then deny him. God allowed Satan to take away his wealth, his fortune, his home, his children. Essentially, he lost all of those things.

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And there were no explanations given.

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His response is to mourn and worship. So here's, if there's one thing you can take away from this whole study of the Book of Job, and it's the following. In the spiritual realm, the proper response to pain and suffering is worship.

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That's easier said than done.

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So, if you're unable to do so, that's okay. At the very least, think of it as the North Star. The orientation we should all have. That the proper response to pain and suffering is worship.

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He said, naked I came, naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

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He doesn't curse God. He clings to God in the dark.

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and his integrity silences the accuser. For now.

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Here's another way of saying what I just said. True faith is not transactional.

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I would venture to say true love is not transactional. You do not have faith because God is giving you stuff or taking away stuff from you. You do not love because the person you're loving gives you stuff or takes stuff away from you. Moving from a transactional understanding of faith and charity to the true understanding is hard.

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It's a journey.

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Faith must endure without reward.

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In Catholic theology, is a concept if you're not familiar with, you might want to look it up. And it's called Holy Indifference. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of Holy Indifference, look it up. The French theologians are the ones that developed it the most. And the idea behind Holy Indifference is to be lovingly indifferent to all that happens to you. Because all that happens to you is willed by God,

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and for your own good.

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And again, you'll hear me say this over and over again. What I'm saying is easy to say, not easy to put in practice.

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So then, again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. And 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? He still holds fast his inegrety

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although you moved me against him to destroy him without cause. And Satan answered the Lord, skin for skin, all that a man has he will give for his life. But put forth thy hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the Lord said to Satan, behold, he is in your power, only spares life. So here's a second heavenly counsel. Satan appears again.

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And this is obviously mythical language. So, doesn't mean not real. It's a specific style of presenting very difficult realities. So, the first two chapters of Genesis are written in the mythical style. And again, myth does not mean not real. It's a way of expressing things that are really difficult. And this is a mythical style.

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to express this interaction between God and Satan. Don't think of a big hall where all the angels show up. It's more of a way of expressing that there was an interaction between God and Satan. Now, what we want to key on here is the fact that God says, You moved me against him to destroy him.

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without cause. You moved me against him to destroy him without cause. Watch the language. I want you to get over this idea that God is a passive God. He allows things to happen, but he never really intervenes himself. The problem with that is that number one, it's not true.

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Because at the end of the day, when we all face our personal judgment, it is God who consigns us to hell or invites us to heaven. It isn't something we can do on our own. And number two, it doesn't give you the psychosomatic assurance you need to remain in peace. If you think of God as, oh, God is merciful, so God is nice and gentle and kind, but all this evil stuff, He allows. Well, then the rock is not a rock.

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you're on a rafter that is constantly moving and you're never going to be without anxiety. Who's going to take care of all this evil stuff if God is just a God of mercy and gentleness and is kind and never allows or touches this stuff?

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But, if you agree that God is the Lord of Lord, Lord of history, and everything that happens in your life is willed by Him for your salvation, now you have a rock to stand on. And now the real battle begins, because you're going to face, you're going to come face to face with your own transactional self. Now you're going to contend with God. Why are you allowing this to happen to me? Why is this happening? But now you're talking to Him.

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Now you're in full conversation with him. And that is going to give you the peace you crave. And that is the lesson of this book of Job. God is allowing all this to happen for a very specific reason that I'll come to at the end of this talk.

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I am now going to repeat that same slide and highlight pieces of it. Here I want to show you, I want to focus on how God sees Job. What qualities does God highlight in Job? Have you considered my servant Job? Key on the word servant. Slave would be another word.

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This is echoed in the Annunciation. Our Lady, behold the servant, the handmaiden of the Lord. Servant. Now, here's the takeaway for all of you. If you honestly think about it, if you're sitting between yourself and yourself and there's no one watching you,

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Do you think of yourself as the servant of the Lord?

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You have to answer me.

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If you don't think of yourself as the servant of the Lord, you're in for a truckload of anxiety and pain because you are at variance with the reality, the divine reality of how God sees us.

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Behold, have you considered my servant, not my child, not my son?

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servant. Now God can invite you into a filial relationship. That's his prerogative, not ours.

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Are you a servant of the Lord?

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that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still holds fast his integrity, although you move me against him. Job has lost everything. He's not privy to this conversation.

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You may be right now going through a truckload of pain and suffering and you're wondering where God is. What you're doing, what we all do, is that we conform God to our resentment.

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We can form God to our resentment, but objectively, God sees things completely differently and He is not required to reveal it to us because we are His servants. But now let's take this and sort of think about it this way. Here are the words that the Lord used. Blameless, upright, fears God, turns away from evil, hold fast to his integrity.

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problem with these words is that they sort of couching ancient language. We don't speak this way. When was the last time you looked at the little kid and you said, oh, this little kid is so cute, he's blameless? When was the last time you looked at somebody and said, oh, this person is upright? If you said that, somebody might think you're talking about somebody standing, like I'm upright. It's language we no longer use. We're not familiar with it.

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The fear of God is mess.

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turns away from evil. What is that supposed to mean? And then holds fast with integrity. Of all the virtues, integrity seems to be a weak one. Why is that being highlighted? So let's explore this a little bit more. Here, the equivalent using modern virtues. Blameless does not mean someone who is sinless. That's not what blameless means. It doesn't mean someone without sin.

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It means someone who perseveres in his faith.

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That's what blameless means. So, blameless highlights the virtue of innocence and purity of heart because it is someone who wants to do the right thing and continuously strive to do the right thing. It means someone who is unwilling to compromise. Someone who lives in harmony with the moral law. So he embodies what Christ would call

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the pure in heart, in Matthew 5.8, one who is single-hearted and intentioned.

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So someone whose conscience is clean would be essentially someone who is blameless. Someone whose conscience is clean is not someone without sin, but at least it's someone who trying to do his best and is true to himself in his effort.

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Virtue upright. Uprightness is really about the virtue of justice. Job is just. He gives to God and neighbor what is their due. It is a reflection of a rectitude of will. Rectitude refers to straight. Rectilinear would be a word in geometry familiar with, meaning it's a straight line. So he has a straight will. It's aligned with objective truth and charity.

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In the Catechism, chapter, uh paragraph 1807, justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor.

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So, in modern terms, a man who stands tall in truth, honest in his dealings, fair in his judgments, faithful to his promises, would be someone who is upright.

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Fear of the Lord is the virtue of holy reverence or piety. Piety is this virtue that gives God what is His due. So when you go to Mass on Sunday and you don't arrive late, you're giving God what is His due.

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When you go to mass on Sunday and do not sit and cross your legs, you're giving God what is His due. When you don't chatter,

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and you stay collected, you're giving God what is His due. That is the virtue of piety.

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and

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Turning away from evil means the virtue, it refers to the virtue of being temperate and courage, temperance and courage. means that when he is, it doesn't mean that when he is confronted with evil, he deals with the temptation. It means that he actively avoids it.

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So for instance, if you are um married, if you're a man and you're married, you're not going to go to a club.

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You're not going to spend more time with your buddies than you do with your wife.

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You're not going to watch anything that is objectionable to the faith.

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So if any one of you here watched the Game of Thrones, you need to go to confession.

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I'm saying to you straight up, that's what you're supposed to do. Because you're not supposed to watch that show. It's trash.

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That's what it means to turn away from evil. To actively seek the good things and avoid the bad things. Let me put you in terms that are a little bit simpler. To turn away from evil means that you're willing to go sit in a park and smell roses and you're unwilling to go and sit in a trash can.

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That's what it means. And then finally, holds fast to his integrity. That was, this one is really interesting. Integrity meaning wholesomeness.

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Someone who is wholesome, someone who displays the virtue of fortitude and fidelity. And this is Job's moral backbone, the glue that holds all the other virtues together. He's not righteous for reward, but because he loves what is right, regardless of the outcome. Fortitude is this virtue, Catechism tells us in 1808, that enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death.

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and to face trials and persecutions. This means he's a man who remains faithful not because life is easy, but because God is good. Let me repeat that. Job is a man who remains faithful not because life is easy, but because God is good.

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Okay, so let's start this up.

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Hmm, maybe this doesn't want to

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What does God desire then, when we see these virtues being lined up this way? So we start with integrity. So integrity means your sound of body and mind. This is why last time I told you that the assumption here for someone like Job to be able to do this trial is that this is a person who did not suffer from trauma.

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or any form of abuse growing up.

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If you know, if you are or you know someone who has these issues, then you're in a different bucket than this man. Understand this. In the Catholic theology, we always say, or morality, always say grace builds on nature.

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Grace builds on nature. So, if you, let's say, are suffering from depression, you can go to confession all you want, it's not going to cure your depression. You can say all the rosaries you want, it won't cure your depression. You can go to mass all you want, it's not going to do it.

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No more so than if you break your arm, should expect any of these sacraments to just miraculously heal your arm. It doesn't work that way. God expects you to do the natural work to become whole again.

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It is, why? Because then you're practicing the virtue of humility, which is so essential for the spiritual life. So, the foundation is this integrity of soundness of body and mind. Then, once you have that as a foundation, you build on top of that temperance and the courage, you're qualified, you're capable, you're daring, you can do things.

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You're competent.

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These two leads you now to turn to God and see God as he truly is. He's all good. And you develop that sense of piety towards God.

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Since you develop a sense of piety towards God, and you recognize God being good, there is a reflection back on you. You want to be like Him, therefore you will foster the sense of justice. And lastly, you have now a single-hearted intention. You are faithful. What God is highlighting in Job is a mirror of Himself.

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What God wants to see in every one of us is Himself. Why does God wants to see Himself in every one of us? Because He is all beautiful.

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and by imparting His beauty upon ourselves, that gives Him glory.

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This is, notion of beauty is probably one of the hardest thing for most people to deal with.

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Aside from narcissists, most people don't think of themselves as beautiful.

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There is a real struggle with the self-image, especially in this neurotic age that we live in, with social media and the rest of it. There is a real struggle with self-image. We're not happy, we're not satisfied with who we are.

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Why? Because we can't see God's image in us.

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God once, em Saint Catherine of Siena once had this vision where she saw this absolutely amazing being and it wasn't really clear, it was full of light and so she fell on her knees to worship and then our Lord said, Catherine, what are you doing? And said, Oh Lord, I thought it was you and I was going to adore you and he said, No, daughter, this what you saw?

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is a soul in a state of grace.

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We don't see the beauty within.

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And as a result, we are willing to degrade ourselves.

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That's what God sees in Job, and that's what he's supposed to see in every one of us. Look what's missing here. Observe what's missing in this whole list.

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Mercy.

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It's astonishing.

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In this whole list that the Lord repeated, there is no mercy.

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Why? Because mercy is going to be the byproduct of everything you see here. Mercy is the result of those things. You don't start with mercy. You get to be merciful. It's hard. You need these things, need these virtues to be truly merciful.

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These two at the bottom are natural virtues. The one up top are supernatural virtues. And I confess that this is for me the greatest challenge in the book of Job. Because Job is of the Old Testament. Supernatural grace is not flowing. Heaven is closed.

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Supernatural grace will flow only with Christ dying on the cross.

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How did he acquire these virtues?

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I have a few thoughts about how that's possible, but nevertheless, it is astounding.

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The only cogent explanation I have is that for someone who is a Gentile, he's not even a Jew, Job is not a Jew, he's a Gentile, who's outside the covenant that God set up with Israel. So, we have to go back to the covenant of Noah, the covenant of Noah is universal, it covers everyone. And even under the covenant of Noah, there is no flow of supernatural grace.

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But it would seem as if the Holy Spirit wills to give supernatural graces to people in the same manner as...

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The Holy Spirit sanctified Our Lady in Her Mother's womb, all on account of Christ's death on the cross. So it would seem that the Holy Spirit is even willing to go pay the price ahead of time for Gentiles.

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which it's a credit which Christ will cover on the cross.

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And that is fascinating and if it is true, I mean I'm speculating here, right? There is no teaching that I can find to say that explicitly, but if it is true, it gives us hope that even in this day and age, even in all of this darkness and all the difficulty and challenges we have, we should never discount the work of the Holy Spirit. Hence, this prayer that I started with is a good one to repeat, Come Holy Spirit.

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And if you find yourself falling into some form of...

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um doubt or becoming bitter because of what is going around you, then you might want to pray that prayer a little bit more, asking the Holy Spirit to come, because the Holy Spirit is the Consoler. eh

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Now, Providence and which to scrape himself and set among the ashes. Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast your integrity? That word again, curse God and die. But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak.

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Shall we receive good at the hand of God? And shall we not receive evil? In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

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So, God did not cause that suffering directly. He allowed Satan to do what Satan wanted to do.

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Satan is powerful but he's not autonomous. He acts only by God's leave. So at the end of the day, like Saint Teresa of Avila said, why do people say the devil, the devil, the devil, when they could say God, God, God? At end of the day, it is not the devil, it is not your neighbor, it is not your boss, it's not your mother-in-law, it's not that crazy driver on the highway, it's God. That's the only person you have to contend with. It is the Lord.

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All of it is willed by Him directly or indirectly for your sanctification. If you can accept that and start to reorient your interior, if you start to restructure your understanding of your relationship to God, everything will change.

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Suffering here.

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I'm going say this is going to be hard, but I just want you to kind of try and absorb this. Suffering here is framed as a test of love, not the punishment for sin.

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Which is why, even though the covenant is structured so that if we obey the commandments of the covenant, if we're faithful to the covenant, we're blessed, and if we are not faithful, we're cursed, that flows this way. We should never attempt to figure out from pain or joy if we're being blessed or if we're being cursed. We can't go back up this way. We can't...

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read God's mind. And sometimes some suffering is due to sin and for our correction and other times it's an act of love. That is heart. Brings us back to this business, are we the servant of the Lord?

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If we are the servant of the Lord, if we're willing to obey, if we are meek and humble, we take everything in stride and we give God the glory. And that is extremely difficult to do.

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God's silence is not absence.

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It is part of His deeper plan for glory.

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We all want answers and we want them now.

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We want to understand why, why, why. And somehow we think, we've convinced ourselves, and you will see with Job, this is going to be very important in the next two lectures, that if God can tell us why, we'll be satisfied. The truth of the matter is, we're not. Why doesn't satisfy the heart?

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just as winning an argument doesn't satisfy.

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You can win an argument, you can be proved right, and you can be just as lonely as you were before.

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You see, we focus on the why, thinking that if we can only understand, we can defend and explain, things will change and we'll go back to, what are we really doing? We want control, that's all that it's doing. Basically, I want my way. That's what I want, I want it my way.

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So we're back. Are we the servant of the Lord? Yes or no? Is God's way way above ours? Are we willing to let Him be God? With no control.

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Now he took a potchard with which to scrape himself and set among the ashes. Job does not merely endure, he worships.

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Tearing garments and shaving hands were signs of mourning, but then he bows. His words, blessed be the name of the Lord. Worship here is not the reward of blessing, but the testimony of integrity. He's not worshipping because he's blessed in his eyes. He's worshipping because that's what he must do. He has integrity.

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Job becomes a kind of liturgy, a soul offering, praising God in a ruined temple.

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If you just can take this picture and just meditate on it, you cannot help but be astounded, being in awe by the inner quality of this guy.

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Then his wife, do you still hold fast your integrity, curse God and die? In all of scripture, there is no stronger words than these. Words that are scathing and cruel.

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um So you can see how the trap that Satan laid now widens. Not only did Job lose his children, his wealth, his health, but now he's losing a very important support, that of his wife.

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Observe the full disrespect on this playing here.

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What she's basically telling him is, reject God and kill yourself.

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That is an ultimate form of despair. So here you see the two. have in one case someone who holds fast to his integrity, keeps worshipping God because that's what he knows he must do. And on the other hand, you have someone who had a transactional faith, who could not endure the storm.

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He said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women. I told you before, faith is a faculty of reason. Faith illuminates your understanding. And it helps you better perceive what God wants from you in your own life. That's what faith is. And you see it here. You speak as one of the foolish women, meaning a woman who lost her reason.

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I mean, you speak as one of the foolish people. I'm not focusing on her being a woman in this case. Just that she's speaking foolishly, meaning she is essentially losing her reason. Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil?

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So this highlights a little bit this very difficult parable in the Gospels where you have the five wise virgins and the five foolish ones. Why were the five foolish ones foolish?

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Because they did not plan. They did not plan that they needed oil. They did not prepare for it. They did not choose the reason to think through and act wisely. And you see it here. He confronts her with the facts. He doesn't respond back by belittling her, putting her down, disrespecting her. He tells her facts. Are we supposed to only receive what is good?

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and not what is evil. That means we're transactional. That means we really don't believe in God.

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In all of this, Job did not sin with his lips. He didn't curse God, he didn't reject God, he stayed true to himself.

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So you see this mourning, this lament in Job and a number of other places that I'm listing here. And I'm not going to go through them, but later on if you do listen to it, you can go back and look at these songs that I'm listing, which echoes the same lament, the same pain.

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So Job's integrity is not a defense it is offered. He's willingly offering his integrity as means to glorify God. He models priestly endurance, suffering without bitterness or blame.

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Job foreshadows Christ, the silent sufferer. And his suffering becomes a spiritual offering pointing toward redemptive suffering. Remember, there is no redemptive suffering at this point. Because the gates of heaven are closed, there is no supernatural grace, there's nothing you can do with your suffering, you can't unite it to Christ, he's not dead on the cross yet. But it points towards that.

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So now let's look at his lament.

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Three friends arrive to comfort Job and they don't recognize him. They weep in silence. They're sad. And he breaks the silence with a bitter lament. Now this is really interesting. The author is really a very good observer. I say he's really a genius. He's a very good observer of human nature. It's one thing for Job to understand all this here. It's a very different thing to be able to live it through his body. And that's the...

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part that it is showing us. You could be absolutely convinced of everything I'm telling you here. It's a very different thing to live it. And that's what scripture reveals to us. Why? Because he curses the day of his birth, longing never to have existed.

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Job asks why life is given to those in misery. It's an existential cross.

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Anyone who suffered enough and who's unwilling to let go of his integrity can always wish to vanish, to stop existing.

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In that wish, there is no cursing God, there is no accusing someone else. It is just a wish for that suffering to end. And that is something that expresses the pain, the bodily and emotional pain that one undergoes. It takes only someone like Christ to be able to not do that.

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So even though you can understand the pain here, the way the body and your emotion lives it are very different. And it's between this difference that people can then show empathy. I would say only those who suffer understand those who suffer. Or rather, only those who suffer well understand suffering and people who suffer. And you'll see it with the friends. So here we're shifting from external devastation to internal sorrow.

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So Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are three friends who come from different areas. I've listed them here, I'm not going to go through them. They're also Gentiles, they're not Israelites. And they represent conventional theology, ancestral tradition and rigid moralism.

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So, like I said earlier, Job's lament is a raw cry of anguish. Not rebellion, but radical honesty before God. He curses the day of his birth, and he longs for non-existence.

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Why is life given to the bitter and soul? Why am I still alive after everything I'm going through? Why? There's grief, there's isolation, there's longing for rest, there's the mystery of suffering.

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Do we make Job's words our own when we are in the depth of suffering?

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Can we not become bitter? Can we not resent God, neighbor or people? Can we get to a point where we express the desire of being free from that suffering without accusing anyone? That may not be perfect, but it's an expression of the suffering of the body and the soul and the emotions that we go through when we are in pain.

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Yes, if we bring them to God in faith. Lament is not faithlessness. It is faithful suffering in speech. You want to suffer? Suffer in front of God, not behind his back.

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So, are they friends? Are they accusers? Here's the rundown of the chapters. Eliphaz starts by saying, suffering his correction, repent and be restored. Bam! He stays at the intellectual level. This guy, there's a guy sitting there, full of sores, sitting in ashes, abandoned, all by himself. These friends don't even bring a glass of water.

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They're there to lecture him.

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So what are they doing? They're just adding to his burden. A true friend doesn't need to lecture you most of the time. A true friend can just be there and offer support.

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Job answers by saying, my pain is real, I turn to God in anguish. I'm anguished. I don't understand why I'm going through all of this. So now you can start to see Job confronted with this reality. I am not guilty. I know I haven't sinned to incur this wrath. Why is this happening to me? You guys don't seem to be able to answer. I'm turning to God.

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Bill dad, your children were judged. So why? They're sinners. That's why they killed. God is just. So you must repent.

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Job then realizes, okay, there's a distance between me and God. I need someone to mediate between us. I need a mediator. And I think this right there is the crux of the matter. You see, up until in the progression of the understanding of who God was, there was the notion of a mediator that was brought up when Moses showed up, which is why I think this book

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is contemporary of Moses because it's expressing the same thing. Israel is in Egypt and they're groaning under pain, under slavery.

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and they don't foresee the need of a mediator. God does, and God sends them a mediator. Job, likewise, is in pain, is suffering, but he realizes, I need a mediator between God and me. That is revolutionary. That's an evolution of the thinking of our relationship with God. And it starts to move the needle away from this transactional faith.

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or as we call it, retributive theology. And we'll get in that in a minute. God is using Job as a linchpin to help everyone understand the need for a mediator.

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So far, no you don't need a mediator, you deserve worse. Repent and then you'll prosper.

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And then Job answers by saying, you misunderstand, I will speak directly to God. So he realizes that these friends are not going to be able to help him and he needs to be able to talk to God directly. He's thinking again, mistakenly, that if I talk to God directly, I ask him why he will tell me and then I will understand. His understanding of God is still very anthropomorphic, very human centric. But that's normal. mean, give the guy some slack.

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I don't know if anyone would be able to do as well as he's doing.

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So, Job 4 and 5, Eliphaz presents himself as a wise elder, claims suffering is God's discipline for sin, invites Job to repent and be restored, quotes a mystical vision to support his claim, the tone is gentle but theologically rigid, ignores the pain of Job, ignores the reality of what happened, doesn't even look at the facts, states what he thinks is the case. Your suffering must be because of sin, repent and we're done.

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We see in Job's reply

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He is confronted with this grief that outweighs his ability to remain silent. The grief is crushing him. And he accuses his friends, rightfully so I would say, of cruelty. His friend is being cruel. And he asks God to end his life mercifully. And the themes here are honesty, loneliness, plea for relief.

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So, if you have someone who's suffering, there is a right way of helping them, a wrong way of helping them. I'm not going to get into the details of this, I'm just going to say that and stop right there. There is a wrong way to be a friend, there is a right way to be a friend. Friendship is precious and delicate.

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Bill Dad comes next. Bill Dad defends God's justice strongly. claims Job's children died because of sin.

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I want you to put yourself in Bildad's shoes. It takes some gumption or some utter stupidity, I don't know, to be able to look at someone who just lost his children and tell that person, you lost your children because of sin. Repent.

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How's that gonna work?

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Let's even assume it's true. Let's even assume that this person received a vision from God that showed him that the children died because of sin. Is that possible? Yes, it is possible. We know it from scripture. David lost his son because of the sin he committed with Bathsheba. And there other examples. So it's absolutely possible. But let's assume you got this vision. Is that... Is that the right way to deliver this message?

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What are you trying to achieve? There are those who talk because they want to convince themselves. And then there's those who talk because they can help.

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and we often fall in both camps.

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So we need to be aware of ourselves. Why am I speaking? Why am I saying those things? What's my goal? What's my intent? What am I trying to achieve? That's part of integrity too. He urges Job to seek God and be restored. The tone is blunt, theological, and completely lacks compassion.

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Job's reply, by marveling at God's power and justice. So he redirects the conversation because he's talking to God. He is conversation with God. And he feels small, targeted and confused. He cries out for a mediator between him and God. So the themes are awe, alienation and theological breakthrough. The theological breakthrough is this need of a mediator. I need to talk to God. God is not talking to me. This not making any sense.

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I need someone to explain. We need someone between us and God. The absolute necessity of Christ is in this book. More so than in any other book of the Old Testament.

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Zofar comes next. He is harsh and accusatory. He claims Job deserves more punishment than he's received.

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Some sort of reverse psychology, I suppose. He urges repentance for a brighter future. The tone is severe, impatient, and lacking in empathy. Again. So those are his friends. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

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You can see this guy is utterly alone.

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No families, no friends, no one. God knows. God knows. God is seeing it all and God allows it.

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Job marks his friend's wisdom. He points out that the wicked often prosper. He just replied with facts. If what you're saying is true, explain to me why there are wicked people who prosper.

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insists on his right to speak to God directly. whereas his friends are mired by a theological framework that doesn't even match reality, Job stays connected with reality. He's facing the facts. They're not making sense, but he doesn't run away from them.

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You see, it is so important for us to always... It's actually a fundamental part of humility. You cannot be humble if you move away from facts.

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which is why we have to be circumspect with our speech. Do not assert something unless you have the facts to back it up. If you don't, you're running the risk of developing pride.

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So theology of retribution, it's a comforting lie.

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Job's friend operated under the theology of retribution. Good is rewarded, evil is punished. It's a simple framework. It's a good framework.

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in the simplicity that it presents. In modern terms, it's a conspiracy theory.

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Anytime we fall for something that attracts us because it seems simple, it has this hypnotic pull.

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I have my own conspiracy theory. I live in a cul-de-sac. And any time I look down to the main street when I'm leaving my car, there's nobody. By the time I come, I get to the bottom of the street and I make a right, it's jam-packed. So I'm convinced they are watching. And as soon as I leave, they call each other. He's leaving. Let's go.

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It's comforting. Emotionally, it's very comforting.

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But it's nuts.

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It has nothing to do with reality.

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You see, we've got to stick to facts.

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Without facts, we can't be humble.

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So this idea that good is rewarded, evil is punished doesn't even cover reality. We know a lot of people who are good and who are not rewarded according to our measure, and a lot of people are evil and seem to live a great life.

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Retribution, therefore, is not the way God operates. This view appears fair and orderly, but it collapses under real suffering. How do you explain it when you have a six-year-old kid who has leukemia?

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Go tell the parents.

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It's because of your sins.

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That's what the theology of retribution requires.

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Job's innocence exposes its failure. This is what God is doing through Job. He takes this perfect exemplar and uses him for all to see that this theology that developed about him is broken. It doesn't work. Which is why Job is a prefiguration of Christ. Why? Because when Christ died on the cross, this notion that you can take someone and turn him into a

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and lay upon him all the sins of your people and accuse him falsely and kill him for the betterment of the nation stops working. The scapegoat will no longer work. Why? Because Christ is perfectly innocent on the cross. And that destroying this notion of scapegoat is fundamental to human rights. That's what Christ did on the cross.

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Retribution may comfort the righteous, but it condemns the innocent. Christ will later overturn this logic through his passion.

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That's what these guys are coming from.

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So, the righteous prosper, the wicked suffer. Suffering is seen as evidence of sin or guilt. Prosperity is interpreted as a sign of divine favor. Today there is among some Protestants the notion of the gospel of health and wealth. If you follow God, you'll be healthy, you'll be wealthy, you'll have the life. It's a form of theology of retribution. Prosperity is interpreted as a sign of divine favor. Job's friends apply this system rigidly to his case.

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particularly Bill Dade in Job 8-4, your children died for their sins. This is straight out from this theology retribution. It is appealing because it provides a sense of justice and order in the universe. It reassures the innocent that they are safe from harm, falsely so. It simplifies complex realities, offering easy explanations. That's why I always tell you beware of conspiracy theories. They don't do that. It protects people from confronting moral ambiguity.

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But discomfort comes at the cost of truth and mercy.

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Today, we are almost suffering from the opposite, what I call the theology of rehabilitation. You're not a sinner, you're a victim. Everybody's a victim. There's no more responsibility. You're responsible for nothing because you're a victim. You're not responsible, you're confused.

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God will not judge you because God loves you. And you're going to heaven because no one goes to hell. The pendulum swung the other way. And it's the mirror image, the flip of that same coin. And it's just as wrong and as cruel. Because it doesn't give you the peace that you receive when you are in conversation with God and understand. And everything happens to you, it is because God's wills it and it's for your own good.

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So it doesn't reflect lived experience. Innocent people do suffer. It reduces God to a transaction manager, not a father. It fosters victim blaming and spiritual cruelty. It prevents compassion and silence in the face of the mystery of suffering. It cannot explain Christ who suffers though sinless. It's a failure. And we all are tempted by it. We want simple, easy explanation.

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So there is an echo of Satan in all of this.

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Because Satan accused Job before God, and then the friends picked up that, and his wife picked up that. Satan no longer speaks, his work is done through others. And we see it even in our society today. Satan only whispers and we do the rest.

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So I'm going to skip this session because I think this section because you understand what I'm talking about so I'm not going to go over it in detail. However, I will just ask you to consider if you're echoing the accuser when we explain a stand of a company someone who's suffering. When we judge quickly needing someone to blame.

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This one particularly is a hard one. We always are looking for someone to blame.

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when we use religion to restore control rather than reveal grace.

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Job's friends defend God but lose sight of God's justice.

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Accusation may wear the robes of orthodoxy, but it betrays charity.

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We always need someone to Except ourselves.

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So his integrity in isolation, is faith without consolation. He refuses to curse God even under pressure. His friends accuse and God remains silent. Job holds to the truth even as it isolates him. His suffering becomes a foreshadowing in Christ's passion. True faith perseveres even when comfort is absent.

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He maintains his integrity. He insists on his innocence. He does not defend himself to gain sympathy, but to remain faithful to the truth. He appeals directly to God, not to the court of public opinion. He refuses to utter a lie just to satisfy his accusers, and his perseverance reveals the depth of his relationship with God.

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He is alone in the ashes. turned away or accused him. Job has not yet answered. God has not yet answered. Job suffers in silence. He feels abandoned but does not abandon God. That's the important thing. Even if you feel abandoned, do not abandon God. Do not do to God what is being done to you.

01:00:24
Spiritual isolation is a crucible for fidelity. Job remains upright with no support system, only conscience and faith. That's the power of faith when it illuminates your reason. You stay, you stay truthful.

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It is the path of the innocent toward the cross. Job anticipates Christ, the innocent who suffers alone.

01:00:51
And we now get to the fact that he has a cry for a mediator. He is longing for a Redeemer. He wants a mediator between him and God. And this longing signals a spiritual breakthrough. Job begins to hope beyond justice toward mercy.

01:01:10
And these verses that I'm highlighting here are among the most Christological in the Old Testament. Job unknowingly anticipates the Incarnation, Christ as mediator and redeemer.

01:01:24
And so, the theological significance is that he wants to move from vindication to communion. He is thirsty to be joined to God. He wants to be with God and he expresses it as a why, but there will be a shift that will come through in the next section.

01:01:45
He also speaks more than he knows. He foreshadows Christ, the High Priest and Advocate. And Christ is the fulfillment of Job's cry. I'm not going to cover this right now.

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Job's friends started in silence and sympathy but turned to blame and suspicion. Their theology was tidy but unmerciful.

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much like most conspiracy theories these days. They're tidy, but they're without mercy. Their piety echoed the accuser more than the comforter. Job endured false counsel, loneliness, and divine silence. His cry for a mediator points forward to Christ. So, here are a few questions I'll leave you with. Do I find myself needing easy answers to other's pains?

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Have I ever spoken as one of Job's friends? Correct, but unkind?

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When friends disappoint me, do I lose hope in God too?

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Do I long for justice or for communion with the one who knows me?

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Can I be a witness of mercy in a world of moralizing?

01:03:04
We're going to take a break after this and then we'll come back for questions. And for the questions, no homilies. Keep them short. Stay on topic. And if I don't know the answer, I'll tell you. So please stand up. Let's finish with a word of prayer. In the of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen. Lord Jesus, we want to thank you and praise you and glorify you for your infinite wisdom and mercy. We want to ask you to send the Holy Spirit upon us all tonight.

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so that whatever we may have heard might take root in our heart and help us to know you better, serve you better, and love you now and in eternity. We ask 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, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.