From Knowledge to Experience: Job's Journey of Faith
October 5, 2024 - Saturday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time
Job 42:1-3, 5-6, 12-17
Today, we conclude our journey with the Book of Job. The accuser of humanity, Satan, lost his case. Until the end, Job "did not sin with his lips" or "charge God with wrong" (Job 1:22; 2:10). Job also proved that we are capable of worshiping, serving, and obeying God without thinking of the rewards that God lavishes upon His servants. In today's passage, we hear Job's final response to the Lord's two speeches and the reversal of Job's fate.
There is a popular saying that "a man with experience is never at the mercy of a man with an opinion" (John Bytheway). Job's response indicates a passage from mere knowledge to personal experience: "I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you" (Job 42:5). Most of us have heard of God by word of mouth. Our faith is based on the testimony of the apostles who encountered the Lord. The Church preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ—His miraculous conception, His life filled with powerful teaching and incredible signs and wonders, His saving death on the cross, His mind-boggling resurrection, and His ascension into heaven. We hear this message proclaimed all over the world, and we believe it, but many of us long for something more.
Tommy Tenney, in his book The God Chasers, writes about an experience similar to Job's: "We’ve talked, preached, and taught about revival until the church is sick of hearing about it. That’s what I did for a living, I preached revivals—or so I thought. Then God broke out of His box and ruined everything when He showed up." Job wanted to have a personal encounter with the Lord, and we should also long for it. We can be like St. Teresa of Avila, who lived in a convent for 19 years, followed all the rules, and yet Christ was not the center of her life. But when, at 39 years old, she had what spiritual writers call a "second conversion" while passing by the image of Christ, everything changed in her life.
After the encounter with God, Job repents "in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6). No more complaining, no more questioning God. Job realizes that God knows everything, that His purposes are beyond our understanding, and that we shall never fully explain the problem of suffering. For St. Teresa of Avila, repentance meant a total commitment to Christ that led to the renewal of the Carmelite Order. Anyone who encounters Christ and repents "in dust and ashes" cannot remain the same. The Job who was preoccupied with himself dies, and the Job who focuses on God comes to life. A lukewarm Teresa dies, and Teresa of Jesus is born. At such a moment, we experience the core of the Christian message: we die to ourselves and begin to live for God.
The ending of the Book connects it with its beginning. We are told that "the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his earlier ones" (Job 42:12). Once again, the ending reminds me of Paul's famous saying that we should not compare our present sufferings "with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Rom. 8:18). But it is worth pointing out that God's incredible blessing comes to Job when he stops complaining and prays for his friends (see Job 42:10). Can we do it as well?