Fifth Sunday Ordinary Time Cycle B
02/03/2021
February 7. 2021
When struggles, difficulties, health problems, financial situations, etc. come into our lives, don't we often ask God this question, why me?
The readings for this Sunday deal with the struggles and sufferings that each of us can go through at times in our lives.
We all know about the story of Job. It was written to teach a moral lesson to the people who had returned from exile of Babylon.
At that time there was very little concept of an afterlife as we know it through Christ.
So, what was believed by most after returning from Exile was ...
... if you are good, live a good life, there will be no problems and
God will bless you with good health, wealth, possessions, children, etc.
But if you sin or do evil, God will get you.
We too can have the same ideas when we do something bad and then something bad happen to us. We may even think that God is punishing us.
We forget all about God's great love an mercy toward us even when we fail, when we are bad.
To counter this idea that God will get us when we are bad...held by the people of the Hebrew Scriptures, the story of Job was told.
Job was a good man and suffered greatly. He lost everything. His friends tried to convince him that he must have done something sinful and that God was punishing him.
But that was not the case, as Job will learn.
The story ends by Job getting everything back more abundantly than before.
We were all promised at our Baptism that we would have it all in eternal life.
What more could we want?
The things of this world will not last or give eternal joy and happiness.
Even knowing this, it is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that God must be punishing us. We must have done something bad.
We can fail to see any value in our struggles, our sufferings as Christ showed us in his earthly life.
Job did learn the lesson that God loved him, unconditionally.
That story can teach each of us something about the value of our sufferings and difficulties.
We all try to avoid suffering, whether physical or mental, but suffering is a reality in our world here on earth.
Jesus must have suffered a lot when, as in this Sunday's Gospel, everyone wanted to come to Him, not for any spiritual insights or enlightenment, but for the physical healing that He could perform for them so that life would be easier. In fact, as in this Gospel, when Jesus went off to pray by himself, he was told that everyone was looking for Him to come back and stay in their town, so that people would come to their town to see the miracle worker. And that meant that they could make money on all the business He would bring in...Interesting!
No wonder Jesus said that He needed to move on to other towns and cities.
St. Paul addresses the Christian Community in Corinth. He encourages them to be always ready to go out of their way to help others. We all know how difficult that can be to do at certain times or for certain people.
Paul demonstrates with his own life this idea of doing for the other, convenient or not. It is a great gift that we often need to pray for.
St. Paul did not run from difficulties, sufferings, disappointments, etc., but saw them as a way to eternal life and he encouraged the Corinthians to follow his example and that of Christ. The same is true for each of us today.https:
Video Clip Background on the Gospel...Fr. Greg Friedman
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