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From: Job 3:1-3, 11-17, 20-23

Job’s Lament

[1] After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.

[2] And Job said:

[3] “Let the day perish wherein I was born.
and the night which said,
‘A man-child is conceived.’

[11] “Why did I not die at birth,
come forth from the womb and expire?
[12] Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breasts, that I should suck?
[13] For then I should have lain down and been quiet;
I should have slept; then I should have been at rest,
[14] with kings and counsellors of the earth
who rebuilt ruins for themselves,
[15] or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
[16] Or why was I not as a hidden untimely birth,
as infants that never see the light?
[17] There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary are at rest.

[20] “Why is light given to him that is in misery,
and life to the bitter in soul,
[21] who long for death, but it comes not,
and dig for it more than for hid treasures;
[22] who rejoice exceedingly,
and are glad, when they find the grave?
[23] Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,
whom God has hedged in?

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Commentary:

3:1-42:6. The central and most important part of the book is the dialogues, which
are in verse form. It is a debate about the sufferings of an innocent man, which al-
so deals with questions to do with God, man and the order of the universe.

The debate sometimes seems quite academic — a discussion about abstract
ideas: at other times it is rather heated and emotional, reflecting particularly the
anguish felt by one of the speakers (Job). Also, it is worth noting that, since Job
is depicted in the prologue as a devout Jew, his conversation with wise men from
other cultures makes him a symbol of the people of Israel under Persian domina-
tion and on the point of losing the hope built up in them by the prophets. In view
of the situation of the Jews during and after the exile, the question must arise:
How can God abandon his people, who have stayed true to him even when in
the direst straits? Surely he cannot oppress them on a mere whim?

As pointed out in the Introduction, there are three groups of speeches — Job’s
dialogue with his friends (chaps. 3-31). Elihu’s intervention (chaps 32-37, and
the speeches of the Lord (38:1-42:6).

3:1-26. The opening words (v. 1) spell out the theme of this long monologue by
Job: he curses the day he was born. Speaking very forthrightly, dramatically and
even with a certain cynicism. the protagonist bewails his life: by contrast with the
“Let there be light” of creation (Gen 1:3), which distinguished day from night. Job
asks that the day of his birth he plunged into darkness forever (vv. 3-10). The rhe-
torical questions and statements in vv. 11-19 express doubts as to whether life is
worth living: If a person is suffering, is death not more desirable than life? The last
part of this soliloquy, (vv. 20-26) asks the question about God almost without men-
tioning him: What sense can we make of things if God brings into being someone
who is destined to suffer? Job feels so wretched that he cannot find the answer,
but the fact that he asks this series of questions implies that an answer there
must be.

Early commentators often posed the question: By speaking as he did, did Job
not sin? St Gregory the Great goes so far as to comment that what Job says is
unreasonable if one looks at it superficially, but that “in using these words the
holy man does not mean them literally” (Moralia in lob. 4,3). Most commentators,
however, justify Job’s lament by arguing that there is no sin involved in someone
desiring to lie no longer if he is weighed down by suffering: sin comes in if a per-
son commits suicide or desires to do so. Jeremiah, too, cursed the day of his
birth (cf. Jer 20:14-17), but he did not sin (cf. St Thomas, Expositio super lob).
Although for other reasons entirely, mystics, too, have experienced a desire to
die, in their eagerness to be in heaven. St Teresa of Avila, for example, goes so
far as to say, “And I live in hope of so high a form of life, that I die because I do
not die” (Poems, 2).

“Those who curse the day” (v. 8): those who love darkness because they can
do evil under cover of it: but even they should curse that night.

3:11-19. Death is seen here in the same kind of way as in traditional wisdom —
as marking the start of a vague existence akin to non-being. Therefore, as com-
pared with suffering it is a place of rest, like a dream, all silent (v. 13), far remo-
ved from the noise created by evildoers (v. 17) or the barks of the taskmaster (v.
18). And there is no distinction of persons there: the poorest are on a par with
kings and magnates (vv. 14-15), the small with the great, servants with masters
(v. 19).

In the light of later Revelation, particularly the death and resurrection of Christ,
death is no longer seen as mere relief from suffering: it marks the point when
one begins to enjoy one’s reward: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord
henceforth.’ ‘Blessed indeed’: says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their la-
bours, for their deeds follow them’” (Rev 14:13). So, for a Christian, death is the
antechamber to the resurrection of the dead. “Since we believe that Jesus died
and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have
fallen asleep” (1 Thess 4:14). St Bernard puts it very nicely: “The death of the
just man is good because it brings him peace: it is better still for the new joy it
gives to him, and best of all because the peace and joy that death brings are
never-ending” (Epistolae, 105).

*********************************************************************************************
Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.

From: Luke 9:51-56

Some Samaritans Refuse to Receive Jesus

[51] When the days drew near for Him (Jesus) to be received up, He set His face
to go to Jerusalem. [52] And He sent messengers ahead of Him, who went and
entered a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for Him; [53] but the people
would not receive Him, because His face was set toward Jerusalem. [54] And
when His disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do You want us to
bid fire come down from Heaven and consume them?” [55] But He turned and
rebuked them. [56] And they went on to another village.

The Calling of Three Disciples

[57] As they were going along the road, a man said to Him (Jesus), “I will follow
you wherever You go.” [58] And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds
of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” [59] To
another He said, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my fa-
ther.” [60] But He said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for
you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” [61] Another said, “I will follow You,
Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” [62] Jesus said to him,
“No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the Kingdom
of God.”

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Commentary:

51. “When the days drew near for Him to be received up”: these words refer to
the moment when Jesus will leave this world and ascend into Heaven. Our Lord
will say this more explicitly during the Last Supper: “I come from the Father and
have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father”
(John 16:28). By making His way resolutely to Jerusalem, towards His Cross,
Jesus freely complies with His Father’s plan for His passion and death to be the
route to His resurrection and ascension.

52-53. The Samaritans were hostile towards the Jews. This enmity derived from
the fact that the Samaritans were descendants of marriages of Jews with Gen-
tiles who repopulated the region of Samaria at the time of the Assyrian captivity
(in the eighth century before Christ). There were also religious differences: the
Samaritans had mixed the religion of Moses with various superstitious practices,
and did not accept the temple of Jerusalem as the only place where sacrifices
could properly be offered. They built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, in op-
position to Jerusalem (cf. John 4:20); this was why, when they realized Jesus
was headed for the Holy City, they refused Him hospitality.

54-56. Jesus corrects His disciples’ desire for revenge, because it is out of kee-
ping with the mission of the Messiah, who has come to save men, not destroy
them (cf. Luke 19:10; John 12:47). The Apostles are gradually learning that zeal
for the things of God should not be bitter or violent.

“The Lord does everything in an admirable way [...]. He acts in this way to teach
us that perfect virtue retains no desire for vengeance, and that where there is true
charity there is no room for anger—in other words, that weakness should not be
treated with harshness but should be helped. Indignation should be very far from
holy souls, and desire for vengeance very far from great souls” (St. Ambrose,
“Expositio Evangelii Sec. Lucam, in loc.”).

An RSV footnote after the word “rebuked” in verse 55 points out that other an-
cient authorities add “and He said ‘You do not know what manner of Spirit you
are of; for the Son of Man came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them’”.
These words appear in a considerable number of early Greek MSS and other
versions and were included in the Clementine Vulgate; but they do not appear
in the best and oldest Greek codices and have not been included in the New
Vulgate.

57-62. Our Lord spells out very clearly what is involved in following Him. Being
a Christian is not an easy or comfortable affair: it calls for self-denial and for put-
ting God before everything else. See the notes on Matthew 8:18-22 and Matthew
8:22.

[The notes on Matthew 8:18-22 state:

18-22. From the very outset of His messianic preaching, Jesus rarely stays in
the same place; He is always on the move. He “has nowhere to lay His head”
(Matthew 8:20). Anyone who desires to be with him has to “follow Him”. This
phrase “following Jesus” has a very precise meaning: it means being His disci-
ple (cf. Matthew 19:28). Sometimes the crowds “follow Him”; but Jesus’ true dis-
ciples are those who “follow Him” in a permanent way, that is, who keep on fol-
lowing Him: being a “disciple of Jesus” and “following Him” amount to the same
thing. After our Lord’s ascension, “following Him” means being a Christian (cf.
Acts 8:26). By the simple and sublime fact of Baptism, every Christian is called,
by a divine vocation, to be a full disciple of our Lord, with all that that involves.

The evangelist here gives two specific cases of following Jesus. In the case of the
scribe our Lord explains what faith requires of a person who realizes that he has
been called; in the second case—that of the man who has already said “yes” to
Jesus—He reminds him of what His commandment entails. The soldier who does
not leave his position on the battlefront to bury his father, but instead leaves that
to those in the rearguard, is doing his duty. If service to one’s country makes de-
mands like that on a person, all the more reason for it to happen in the service
of Jesus Christ and His Church.

Following Christ, then, means we should make ourselves totally available to Him;
whatever sacrifice He asks of us we should make: the call to follow Christ means
staying up with Him, not falling behind; we either follow Him or lose Him. In the
Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) Jesus explained what following Him involves
—a teaching which we find summarized in even the most basic catechism of Chris-
tian doctrine: a Christian is a man who believes in Jesus Christ—a faith he receives
at Baptism — and is duty bound to serve Him. Through prayer and friendship with
the Lord every Christian should try to discover the demands which this service in-
volves as far as he personally is concerned.]

[The notes on Matthew 8:22 state:

22. “Leave the dead to bury their own dead”: although this sounds very harsh, it
is a style of speaking which Jesus did sometimes use: here the “dead” clearly re-
fers to those whose interest is limited to perishable things and who have no aspi-
rations towards the things that last forever.

“If Jesus forbade him,” St. John Chrysostom comments, “it was not to have us
neglect the honor due to our parents, but to make us realize that nothing is more
important than the things of Heaven and that we ought to cleave to these and not
to put them off even for a little while, though our engagements be ever so indispen-
sable and pressing” (”Hom. on St. Matthew”, 27).]

We see here the case of the man who wanted to follow Christ, but on one condi-
tion—that he be allowed to say goodbye to his family. Our Lord, seeing that he is
rather undecided, gives him an answer which applies to all of us, for we have all
received a calling to follow Him and we have to try not to receive this grace in vain.
“We receive the grace of God in vain, when we receive it at the gate of our heart,
and do not let it enter our heart. We receive it without receiving it, that is, we re-
ceive it without fruit, since there is no advantage in feeling the inspiration if we do
not accept it [...]. It sometimes happens that being inspired to do much we con-
sent not to the whole inspiration but only to some part of it, as did those good
people in the Gospel, who upon the inspiration which our Lord gave them to fol-
low Him wished to make reservations, the one to go first and bury his father, the
other to go to take leave of his people” (St. Francis de Sales, “Treatise on the
Love of God”, Book 2, Chapter 11).

Our loyalty and fidelity to the mission God has given us should equip us to deal
with every obstacle we meet: “There is never reason to look back (cf. Luke 9:62).
The Lord is at our side. We have to be faithful and loyal; we have to face up to our
obligations and we will find in Jesus the love and the stimulus we need to under-
stand other people’s faults and overcome our own” (St. J. Escriva, “Christ Is Pas-
sing By”, 160).

*********************************************************************************************
Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.

Readings at Mass

First reading

Job 3:1-3,11-17,20-23 ©

Job broke the silence and cursed the day of his birth. This is what he said:

May the day perish when I was born,

and the night that told of a boy conceived.

Why did I not die new-born,

not perish as I left the womb?

Why were there two knees to receive me,

two breasts for me to suck?

Had there not been, I should now be lying in peace,

wrapped in a restful slumber,

with the kings and high viziers of earth

who build themselves vast vaults,

or with princes who have gold and to spare

and houses crammed with silver.

Or put away like a still-born child that never came to be,

like unborn babes that never see the light.

Down there, bad men bustle no more,

there the weary rest.

Why give light to a man of grief?

Why give life to those bitter of heart,

who long for a death that never comes,

and hunt for it more than for a buried treasure?

They would be glad to see the grave-mound

and shout with joy if they reached the tomb.

Why make this gift of light to a man who does not see his way,

whom God baulks on every side?

Psalm

Psalm 87:2-8 ©