More from Job on Hopelessness ... and Hope

More readings from Father Job at Mom's Gravesite ... about his loss of hope ... and where he can seek new hope ...

Job turns to God and receives from His Hand nothing but exhaustion and desolation in this world. "Surely now God has worn me out; he has made me desolate in my company ..." (16:7) God is his adversary (16:9). Among his friends and companions he finds witnesses against him (16:7) and scorn (16:20) and mockery (17:2). Job's very spirit is broken (17:1). His "eye has grown dim from grief, and all my members are like a shadow" (17:7).

What is left for him, asks Job, but the Grave?

"... my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me." (17:1) "My days are past," he says (17:11), "my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart" ... all are gone, broken, destroyed (17:11).

Where is Job's house and home?

They are to be found in the Grave: "If I look for Sheol as my house, if I spread my couch in darkness ..." (17:13)

Where are Job's parents and where is his sister?

They are to be found in the Grave: "if I say to the pit, 'You are my father,' and to the worm, 'my Mother,' or 'My sister' " (17:14)

And if these are his house, his father, his mother, and his sister, then, Job implores God, "where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we [Job and his hope] descend together into the dust?" (17:15f).

Gone is Job's hope. None of his mortal family and friends remain for him. Job's companions "torment me and break me to pieces with words" (19:1). When Job cries out "'Violence!' [he is] not answered, I call aloud, but there is no justice," 19:7 for God Himself has "walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkeness upon my paths, He has stripped from me my glory, and taken the crown from my head, He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone ..." (19:8-10). He has bereft Job of his brethren and his kinsfolk, and his "close friends have failed me" (19:13f); even his "acquaintances are wholly estranged from me" (19:13). He is counted "as a stranger" and has "become an alien in their eyes." (19:15).

What? Closest family and friends? Are even these no longer among his support? No ... Job's very wife, brothers, young children, intimate friends ... all are gone from him (19:17-21) ...

"I am repulsive to my wife,
loathsome to the sons of my own mother.
Even young children despise me;
when I rise they talk against me.
All my intimate friends abhor me.
and those whom I loved have turned against me.
My bones cleave to my skin and to my flesh
and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
Oh have pity on me, have pit on me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me!"

And Job is not at all above crying out to demand Why? Why? Why? (19:22) ...

"Why do you, like God, pursue me?
Why are you not satisifed with my flesh?"

And now, in the midst of his lamentations and despair of any hope in this world, Job declares his Hope in He Who Is the Hope of the Hopeless (19:25):

"For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at last he will stand upon the earth ..."

Oh God, you are truy all there is in Whom to seek Hope. Help me realize that in gazing in pity up on the example of Job, even if I had family and friends, Job shows me that there is no more Hope in these than in anyone or anything else in this world. There is rather only Hope in Thee.

Hope of the Hopeless ... be my Hope ... O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer.

Amen.

Charles Delacroix
Monday of the 27th Week of Ordinary Time