Hope Amid Suffering (5th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

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The book of Job relates the story of how Job copes with suffering after losing everything and being afflicted with grievous illness. It is particularly concerned with the problem of evil. Job’s fate shows us how God permits evil in order to accomplish His plans and bring about the greater good. However, because our perspective is limited, we often do not see what that greater good might be. Thus, Job only sees the misery afflicting him at present. He muses on the reality of suffering, and how every person must experience it at some point in their life, albeit in varying degrees. For him, life is a never ending series of troubles.

And yet, Job does not lose hope. Later in the book, he declares that he will someday see God in the flesh after he dies. Here, we see Job affirming the Resurrection of the dead. Although this concept is not fully fleshed out in the Old Testament, we do see the seeds of the belief here:

“O that my words were written down!

O that they were inscribed in a book!

O that with an iron pen and with lead

they were engraved on a rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer lives,

and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;

and after my skin has been thus destroyed,

then in 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!” (Job 19:23-27)

When we get to the New Testament, this teaching is fleshed out further. Jesus during His earthly ministry healed the sick, cast out demons, and raised the dead, as the Gospel shows. However, this is only a prelude to the greatest act of restoration, which is the Resurrection of the dead. Paul reminds us that our momentary afflictions are preparing us for an eternal glory beyond comparison (2 Corinthians 4:17). When it arrives, Scripture declares, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and suffering will be no more (Revelation 21:4).

This is the hope that we as believers hold on to, that despite our present sufferings, we will someday be liberated from it all, and spend eternity with God.

J. Luis Dizon