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Commentary on the Gospel for Tuesday, October 1, 2024
As a continuation of yesterday’s meditation, today, on the day the Church commemorates Saint Therese, the collect prayer proposes: “O God, who prepares your kingdom for the humble and the simple, grant us to confidently follow the path of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus so that, through her intercession, your eternal glory may be revealed to us. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Today’s first reading continues with the book of Job. The passage does not show Job’s famous patience, but quite the opposite. It is a bitter speech and a tragic lament for having been born. Something very human that we all experience to some extent when we believe we cannot bear failure and physical or moral suffering. José María Cabodevilla published, in the 70s, a work entitled “The Impatience of Job.” And the poet Carlos Pujol, author of Fragments from the Book of Job, says: “Whoever has not felt like Job in some situation does not know what it is to live, because that experience of unbearable pain that is not understood is the deepest key to what it is to be human.” In the end, we know, Job ended well. And it is this confidence that in the end everything will be okay, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end, that frees us from despair. Like many saints, Therese proved, with her very painful illness, that it is possible to endure pain to the extreme, if we welcome God’s grace.
In today’s Gospel reading, we see the exasperated and impatient reaction of James and John to a setback that may be serious, certainly not fatal, which they want to “solve” with a rain of fire. Somewhat disproportionate, isn’t it? The evangelist simply says that Jesus rebuked them. It seems to me that the rebuke had a certain touch of good humor.
Following Jesus Christ implies constancy in faith, even and especially when all circumstances seem adverse, renouncing revenge if the evil comes from a human being, having patience and always awaiting the salvation that Christ has won for us. And understanding, even if it is mysterious, that the joy of the Lord is our strength.