Listening and Understanding

Homily for Saturday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Tiime

In what will be the last passage that we will hear proclaimed from the Book of Job this week, the sacred author teaches us a very important lesson; namely, the difference between listening, hearing, and understanding. Through his words, we can readily see that Job has not only heard what God has had to say, he understands the message. Job has challenged God and has been rebuked. Rather than refusing to listen to God’s words, Job has taken them to heart and realizes that he does not have any reason to believe that God has been mistaken in his treatment of Job. “I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes.”

God graciously accepts Job’s confession and gives him twice the amount he has lost. In the Law of Moses, this is exactly what God demands of anyone who deprives another of his property. God models the kind of behavior that God wishes to see in all of us.

While this experience may seem to be without a point, the Gospel passage for today presents us with another point of reference through which we can see Job’s experience. Job has come to know God better through this experience. The story of Job is another example of God’s self-revelation. In asking us to spend time with this story, the church is hoping that we will come to understand and know God better. If we, like Job, come to understand that God is the master of the universe rather than thinking of humankind in that role, then we, too, will benefit. The moral of the story applies to all of us, not simply to Job or his three friends or his wife.

The Gospel for today echoes that moral. We hear Jesus at prayer as he praises God for revealing to the simple and childlike the mystery that is God. As we learned when we were children from our catechism, God made all of us to come to know him, love him, and to spend eternity with him.