Man’s existence is similar to fighting …

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Consideration for 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, year B1

Isn’t the human being like a fighter?

Doesn’t he run his days like a mercenary?

Like a slave, which sighs to the shadow, like a laborer, which awaits payment.

Months of torment gained, nights of torment destined for me.

I’ll lie down saying to myself, “When will it be dawn and get up?”

But the night becomes eternity and my pain continues until dark.

From the Book of Job

Job and Lucifer, Albrecht Dürer, source: http://aczyzycka.wikidot.com/historia-hioba

Today’s readings are a call to trust God anyway. Even though the facts are as they are. Even though the world is constantly grinning at us and at us. Even though trust in another person is being undermined, and faith in human goodness is declining.

What does it mean to trust God?

Job, deprived of all goods that we humans usually associate with happiness, cries out to God. Loud and poignant is his scream. He feels sorry for him, tells him that he is bad, describes to God how hard his life is and how terrible he is aware of this burden. But she doesn’t blame Him for it. Even though he does not know peace, because “man is similar to fighting”. Even though the pain and suffering keep him from sleeping peacefully, and “the night seems forever”.

As I read the words of Job, which he throws in the face of God, I wonder about the greatness of this man’s faith. Job does not close in with his worries and suffering, he screams, groans towards heaven and tries to share difficult experiences with God. He wouldn’t even think to blame or blame God for his situation.

Who among us does not have such sleepless nights full of black thoughts? Those days when, while living peacefully, you suddenly experience great suffering, illness, loss, pain. All that leads to despair. Where nothing is seen that could be associated with hope …

Hiob, Leon Bonnat source: http://www.valdemarlethin.com/2010/11/%E2%80%9Djob%E2%80%9D-leon-bonnat

How to keep trust and continue to believe God when everything around you seems to show that either God doesn’t exist or He has forgotten His promises long ago?

I am obviously asking the question the wrong way. The question should be different.

Why do we not be confident in the difficulties and problems of our daily life, even though everything around us shows that God exists, that He always keeps His promises? Why can people in mists of despair lose faith in God’s existence, “spiritual vision”, knowing things as they are, even though He is still standing by and supporting our existence?

What makes us, in the worst moments of our lives, prefer to surrender to apathy, despair, anger, rather than trustingly cling to God and telling Him, even shouting out what is on our hearts and trusting that He will find a solution to it all?

The psalmist sings a song of trust today. She proclaims a God who heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds. A God who counts all the stars and gives each one a name.

Probably every man at least once in his life looked at the starry sky at night and wondered how many celestial bodies there are above it. Some of them received names that allow us to more or less orient ourselves on the sky map. God is the one who knows the name of every star in the sky. It takes my breath away when I realize the enormity of God’s knowledge of the reality around me.

Becoming aware of God’s omniscience can be the basis of trusting Him. The foundation of limitless submission to His will. One that has accompanied many people who happened to live and die in terrible times. People dying for others in the trenches of war, in concentration camps, on death row. Trust in God, true trust, deprives a person of any reflexes to despair. Brings calmness or creative objection. It strengthens those who fight for hopeless causes, it strengthens doubters in the face of defeat.

Such a God who knows and acts for the good of man is nevertheless a God urging us to bear witness to faith. Saint Paul, in the Letter to the Corinthians, captures this exhortation in the words: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel”.

This text has always puzzled me. When my friends once asked me why I wanted to study theology, they always expected answers like: I want to convert people more effectively, I want to be on missions. But something else was driving me. I was fascinated by God in the person of Jesus, His teaching did not give me peace. The Gospel reminded me day and night, and Jesus’ words almost haunted my soul as it waited for some answer. Somehow I was called to know God. And I wanted to give myself time to decide how to respond to the call to serve God.

I have always been objected to saying that every Christian must evangelize, that it is his duty. I did not agree with what I read today in St. Paul. I felt that not every disciple of Christ needed to evangelize others. I don’t think I really understood then what preaching the Gospel is.

Today, the fragment that hits me the most is: “So, not depending on anyone, I have become a slave to everyone, so that the more I get. I have become weak to the weak, to win over the weak. I have become everything for everyone, to save at least some of them at all. And I do everything for the gospel, to have my share in it. ”

I don’t belong to anyone because I belong to Christ. I am weak at my own request, I give up various tools of strength (including persuasion) so that the weak do not feel humiliated around me. Save at least some of them – this is the main goal, for this purpose it is worth giving up the display of the power of erudition, the advantage of talents.

Everything is for the sake of the Gospel, to share it. To experience Jesus’ teachings in your life. In my life full of children’s laughter and screaming, full of people striving for the highest values, full of happiness that does not come with the number of zeros in my account.

Today, this is how I understand evangelization and the obligation to adhere to the guidelines of the Good News. My personal mission is to serve my family, surrounded by the people closest to me and all those whom God will put on my way. Even those who are very uncomfortable traveling companions do not understand the Gospel, because I cannot convey it properly, they do not see me as a good witness, because I am too weak to give it. Despite everything, I try to believe that even someone so little focused, and thus hopelessly writing or speaking without order and composition, can sometimes become an instrument of evangelization. God knows how to turn my pathetic struggle with evil into something that will “save at least some”.

And at the end of today’s reading, the Evangelist Mark gives us the image of Jesus surrounded by people in need of healing, release. For me, one sentence is of particular importance in this text: “He healed many who were afflicted with various diseases and cast out many evil spirits, but he did not let the evil spirits speak because they knew who He was”.

Because they knew who He was…

Believing in God, trusting Him, sometimes it is difficult to agree to the fact of the existence of rebel angels, Satan, evil spirits working to the detriment of man, against the Creator. Jesus approaches people who are possessed and casts out demons. Why doesn’t he let them talk, why doesn’t he let them reveal his name, his true divine presence?

Jesus, as God, is a participant in the creation of the world, he participates in the creation of all reality, of all creatures that exist in the world. Including angels, powerful and beautiful spirits. He knows each of them exactly, he invented them himself, called them into existence from nothingness, gave them names and called them to specific tasks.

And now that, in rejecting His gift, they go against the order of creation, He casts it out. It deprives them of the right to vote. They cannot speak of God or proclaim His glory or curse Him. It is a terrible picture for me. It is a show of the strength of the Son of a Man who justly and firmly opposes those who destroy the beauty of the human soul, causing it to fall and die.

Jesus in this picture is an apocalyptic figure for me. A ruler who, despite the evil and injustice surrounding me, really rules everything. He has control, knows what he is doing, has the power to change the effects of bad deeds, heal and free people from Satan’s actions.

Therefore, despite the enormous grief and anger that sometimes fills the soul and heart of a Christian who looks at what is happening in the world with God’s laws, it is sometimes worth remembering this image. Jesus ruling over all weakness and all lies of the evil spirit.

This picture helps me to survive torments, fluctuations in faith, despair in moments of failure, in moments of fall. God is greater than our despair. Let’s keep that in mind.

“Our Lord is great and mighty,

And His wisdom unspeakable.

The Lord bears the humble,

The necks of sinners are bent to the ground. ”