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Image: Job and His Friends by Ilya Repin (1869)
Catechesis 10 on Old Age
Piazza San Pietro – Mercoledì, 18 maggio 2022
And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. 11 Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money[a] and a gold ring. 12 The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. 13 He also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. 15 In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. 16 After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations. 17 And Job died, old and full of days.
Catechesis on Old Age – 10. Job. The trial of faith, the blessing of waiting
Dear brothers and sisters,
The biblical passage we have heard closes the Book of Job, a summit of universal literature. We meet Job on our journey of catechesis on old age: we meet him as a witness of the faith that does not accept a “caricature” of God but cries out his protest in the face of evil, until God responds and reveals his face. And God in the end responds, as always in a surprising way: he shows Job his glory but without crushing him, indeed, with sovereign tenderness, as God does, always, with tenderness. We must read the pages of this book well, without prejudice, without clichés, to grasp the strength of Job’s cry. It will do us good to put ourselves at his school, to overcome the temptation of moralism in the face of exasperation and dejection for the pain of having lost everything.
In this concluding passage of the book – we remember the story, Job who loses everything in life, loses his wealth, loses his family, loses his son and also loses his health and remains there, wounded, in dialogue with three friends, then a fourth, who come to greet him: this is the story – and in this passage of today, the final passage of the book, when God finally takes the floor (and this dialogue of Job with his friends is like a way to get to the moment for God to give his word) Job is praised because he understood the mystery of God’s tenderness hidden behind his silence. God rebukes Job’s friends who presumed to know everything, to know about God and pain, and, having come to console Job, had ended up judging him by their pre-established schemes. May God preserve us from this hypocritical and presumptuous pietism! May God preserve us from that moralistic religiosity and religiosity of precepts that gives us a certain presumption and leads to Phariseeism and hypocrisy.
This is how the Lord expresses himself towards them. Thus says the Lord: “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has”. This is what the Lord says to Job’s friends. “my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (42:7-8). God’s declaration surprises us, because we have read the fiery pages of Job’s protest, which have left us dismayed. Yet – says the Lord – Job spoke well, even when he was angry and even angry against God, but he spoke well, because he refused to accept that God is a “Persecutor”. God is something else. And as a reward God returns to Job twice all his possessions, after asking him to pray for those bad friends of his.
The turning point of the conversion of faith takes place precisely at the culmination of Job’s outburst, where he says: ” For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (19:25-27). This step is beautiful. I am reminded of the end of that brilliant oratorio by Handel, the Messiah, after that feast of the Alleluja slowly the soprano sings this passage: “I know that my Redeemer lives”, with peace. And so, after all this thing of Job’s sorrow and joy, the voice of the Lord is something else. “I know that my Redeemer lives”: it is a beautiful thing. We can interpret it this way: “My God, I know that You are not the Persecutor. My God will come and do me justice.” It is the simple faith in the resurrection of God, the simple faith in Jesus Christ, the simple faith that the Lord always awaits us and will come.
The parable of the book of Job represents in a dramatic and exemplary way what really happens in life. That is, that on a person, on a family or on a people too heavy trials are struck, trials disproportionate to the smallness and human fragility. In life often, as they say, “it rains in the wet”. And some people are overwhelmed by a sum of evils that seems really excessive and unfair. And so many people are like that.
We’ve all known people like that. We were impressed by their cry, but often we were also admired in the face of the firmness of their faith and their love in their silence. I am thinking of the parents of children with severe disabilities or of those who live in permanent illness or of the family member who is next to them… Situations often aggravated by the scarcity of economic resources. At certain junctures of history, these piles of burdens seem to give themselves as a collective appointment. This is what has happened in recent years with the Covid-19 pandemic and what is happening now with the war in Ukraine.
Can we justify these “excesses” as a superior rationality of nature and history? Can we religiously bless them as a justified response to the guilt of the victims, who deserved them? No, we cannot. There is a sort of right of the victim to protest, vis-à-vis the mystery of evil, a right that God grants to anyone, indeed, that He Himself, after all, inspires. I find people coming up to me and saying: “But, Father, I protested against God because I have this problem, that other …”. But, you know, dear person, that protest is a way of prayer, when you do so. When children, young people protest against their parents, it is a way to attract attention and ask that they take care of them. If you have in your heart some wound, some pain and you want to protest, protest even against God, God listens to you, God is Father, God is not afraid of our protest prayer, no! God understands. But be free, be free in your prayer, do not imprison your prayer in preconceived patterns! Prayer must be so spontaneous, like that of a son with his father, who tells him everything that comes into his mouth because he knows that the father understands him. God’s “silence” in the first moment of the drama means this. God will not shy away from confrontation, but at first he leaves Job the vent of his protest, and God listens. Perhaps, at times, we should learn from God this respect and tenderness. And God does not like that encyclopedia – let’s call it that – of explanations, of reflection that Job’s friends make. That is the juice of language, which is not right: it is that religiosity that explains everything, but the heart remains cold. God does not like this. He likes Job’s protest or Job’s silence more.
Job’s profession of faith – which emerges precisely from his unceasing call to God, to a supreme justice – is completed in the end with the almost mystical experience, I would say, which makes him say: “I knew you only by hearsay, but now my eyes have seen you” (42:5). How many people, how many of us after a somewhat ugly, somewhat dark experience, give the step and know God better than before! And we can say, like Job: “I knew you by hearsay, but now I have seen you, because I have met you. This testimony is particularly credible if old age takes charge of it, in its progressive fragility and loss. Old people have seen a lot in life! And they have also seen the inconsistency of men’s promises. Men of law, men of science, men of religion even, who confuse the persecutor with the victim, imputing to this the full responsibility for their own pain. They are wrong!The old who find the way to this testimony, which converts resentment for loss into tenacity for waiting for God’s promise – there is a change, from resentment for loss towards a tenacity to follow God’s promise – these old men are an irreplaceable garrison for the community in facing the excess of evil. The gaze of believers who turns to the Crucified One learns precisely this. May we too learn it, from so many grandparents and grandmothers, from so many elderly people who, like Mary, unite their prayer, sometimes heartbreaking, with that of the Son of God who on the Cross abandons himself to the Father. Let us look at the elderly, let us look at the old men, the old women; let us look at them with love, let us look at their personal experience. They have suffered so much in life, they have learned so much in life, they have gone through so much, but in the end they have this peace, a peace – I would say – almost mystical peace, that is, the peace of the encounter with God, so much so that they can say “I knew you by hearsay, but now they have seen my eyes to you”. These old men resemble that peace of the Son of God on the cross who abandons himself to the Father.
