Readings (Year B):
Job 7:1 – 4, 6 – 7
Psalms 147:1 – 2, 3 – 4, 5 – 6
1 Corinthians 9:16 – 19, 22 – 23
Mark 1:29 – 39
Reflection: A new way of looking at the suffering of life
I was fascinated by this week’s lectionary and its themes of labor, where everyone seems to be working. Work is something we talk about a lot, both in our broader society and in the church. I appreciate the honesty of Job’s lament and imagine that his feelings are not alien to many of us, who live in a world where we count down the days to the weekend, and often feel that our work is unfulfilling, and endless. And lamentably, in some parts of the world, the Congo for instance, there are many who quite literally understand Job’s image of “being a slave longing for shade.”
But our readings this week feature different types of work. Job’s sorrow and exhaustion certainly ring true, but St. Paul also reminds us of the value and importance of participating in God’s work. Jesus says plainly that his arduous itinerary of healing and preaching was what he came to do.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean that working in a deeply purposeful way, doing our work as disciples, isn’t challenging—or even occasionally dispiriting. In fact, to invoke one of our most revered modern disciples: in Dorothy Day’s recounting her life and ministry, we often hear echoes of Job’s anguish. She battled throughout her life with fatigue, and the temptation to bitterness. In The Long Loneliness, she writes:
“Life in community with broken people will always include…disappointment. But they can be met with resilience, and with a faith in the eternal significance of a life lived with the suffering. Such a life will never be easy or tidy; the work is endless and will always stretch on before us.”
Day’s assessment that the work of the gospel is “endless and will always stretch on before us” illuminates, for me, this week’s gospel, where Jesus, after working tirelessly the day before, seeks out solitude to pray and refresh himself. Yet even then, the apostles interrupt him, and say “everyone is looking for you.”
And something like Day’s advocacy for the “eternal significance of a life lived with the suffering” surely must have occurred to St. Paul, who responded to his apostolic call by divesting himself of his freedom and becoming “all things to all people.”
With Job, we find a lyrical and poignant form representation of an enduring quality of human consciousness, but with Jesus, St. Paul, and Dorothy Day, we are given a new way of looking at the toils and pangs of earthly life. We are instructed to do our work on behalf of the gospel, but also to remain humble about our individual role. We will never finish the work on our own, and no matter how endowed we are with earthly merit, we must seek out the role of servant.
And when we fear that we might crumble into dust, and when our soul groans forth with all of Job’s tormented fatigue, we must follow the example of Jesus and pray. We must follow the example of St. Paul and remember that we are called to work for the gospel that we might have our own share in it. And we must follow Day’s example by renewing our appreciation of the “eternal significance of a life lived with the suffering.”
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