for September 30
Memorial of Saint Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Church

When I was twelve or thirteen, I found Reader’s Digest Condensed Books on a vacation cottage shelf. These were thick volumes, with abbreviated versions of three or four best-sellers in each. Over the course of a week, I devoured them during the mandatory hour’s rest between lunch and going back to the beach. Later in life, I encountered many of these books again, learning much more from the rest of their stories.

This week’s readings give an even more condensed glimpse of the anthology that comes to us as the Book of Job. On Monday, we heard of Job’s affliction and by Saturday we will conclude with the report that Job died old and full of years, more blessed by the Lord in his latter days than his earlier ones. If this week’s readings lead us back to the full text of a story we think we know well, then they will have done some good.  For the Book of Job wrestles with a problem that we all face time and again in our lives: what to make of the suffering we see and experience, and more pointedly, why does God permit it?

These are the questions of a lifetime, not a single day’s scripture passage or reflection on it. And even when—if—we feel we’ve come to some understanding, then (in the words of today’s first reading) ‘the earth is shaken out of its place, its pillars tremble, the stars are sealed up’ and any answer we’ve found collapses, and we start again.

So with that caution in mind, what might this week’s cycle of readings from Job offer to our present understanding and experience of suffering?

On Wednesday we read Job’s hymn to God’s awesome wisdom, might and greatness, so far beyond Job’s own questioning or power to resist. God “stretches out the heavens and treads upon the crests of the sea. . . [God] does great things past finding out, marvelous things beyond reckoning.” Job praises God’s mysterious power—not mysterious in the sense of a puzzle to be solved, but in the sense of something beyond our understanding and control. Job turns to God in awe and wonder, not because he believes he is owed an explanation for his experience.

Then in Thursday’s first reading (some ten chapters later in Job’s dialogue with three friends), Job professes his confidence that he will see God with his own eyes. Job is steadfast, sure that he has not been abandoned by the God he longs for.

Suffering,  especially the suffering of people we love, can make us rush to fix things, to find an explanation—that God has a plan, or that God won’t give us more than we can bear—in our urgent desire to alleviate pain. Even a brief glimpse into the Book of Job suggests another approach. Can we practice humility before the mystery of God and our experience of suffering? Can we seek in God not explanations but accompaniment, so that we know in our inmost being that God does not abandon us, even in our suffering?

The fall of 2020 feels a lot like the suffering of Job. This could be a good time to read Job’s story in full, to consider why it has earned a place in the canon of Scripture and what insights it offers us, even in the lectionary’s condensed version.
—BJ Brown

Today’s readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.