Wednesday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 457

I know well that it is so;
but how can a man be justified before God?
Should one wish to contend with him,
he could not answer him once in a thousand times.
God is wise in heart and mighty in strength;
who has withstood him and remained unscathed?


I recently finished a book, God Owes Us Nothing, about Blaise Pascal and the Jansenist movement in the Catholic Church. Jansenism was a Catholic version of Calvinism. Both emphasized the sovereign authority of God. Because God is infinitely holy no sinner has any claim upon God, and we are all sinners. Secondly, because God knows the future as well as the past, God's judgement upon each of us has already been determined.
The logic seems unassailable although the consequences of such logic are nonsense: no amount of right living can save the sinner, no sin can doom God's elect. 
Jansenists represented a "conservative" response to the changing times of the Enlightenment. They were opposed by the Jesuits who were enmeshed among the influential bourgeoisie and aristocratic ruling class. The Jesuits could not abandon their wealthy patrons to the secularism that was sweeping away all religious influences; they acted as confessors and spiritual advisers to people whose decisions shaped the course of history. They were often sympathetic to women and men and their servants trapped in compromising situations, and absolved their sins with very light penances. "Three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys." 

Recognizing the human values of the new secularism, Jesuits would not condemn the emerging entertainment industry, for instance, with its appreciation for virtue in "the world." Even suicides like Ophelia deserved sympathy and a Christian burial. 

But Jansenists represented the "simple, poor Catholic peasants" who still had to live under the old regime of severe punishment for questioning any authority. Their moral experience did not allow for grey areas. Divorce, abortion, serial polygamy: these were mortally sinful. Those who committed such deeds could expect no sympathy in this world or the next! There was nothing promised but eternal, relentless suffering in the fires of Hell. 

The move away from this arbitrary, merciless authority into atheism was not more than a half-step. If the parent feared the Lord, the upwardly-mobile child discovered there were no apparent consequences for ignoring the Church and its arbitrary rules. 

Today's first reading from the Book of Job describes that Calvinist/Jansenist image of God. "He" is supreme beyond all measure. There is no reasoning, dealing, dickering or compromising with this God. Supremely generous in bestowing existence upon wretched humanity, he certainly owes them nothing more. They weren't necessary in the first place; the world would be just as beautiful without them, and God just as good! 
If God chooses to send his Son -- His Only Begotten Son -- to save them from the consequences of their rank disobedience, he owes them no third chance after Baptism. 

This God would certainly endorse F. Scott Fitzgerald's dictum, "There are no second acts in American life." Although there are. Even notorious sinners like Richard Nixon, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North keep reappearing as influence peddlers. Recently, Louis CK is making a comeback despite the me-too movement. How many more destroyed business men and entertainers will soon reappear and claim to be rehabilitated? 

In the end, Job's argument for the sovereignty of God were rewarded by God's relenting. Perhaps because Job argued against the righteousness of his suffering, his fortunes were reversed and he enjoyed a plentiful redemption when his wealth and family were restored. He didn't win his argument with God, but he remained before him despite his suffering. 

More importantly, Catholics have learned to live with secularism even as it flouts sexual mores and misogyny. Many Catholics are willing to support even a twice-divorced, thrice-married philandering POTUS on the theory that he opposes abortion. 

The Book of Job presents the moral dilemmas of human life in all their complexity. The Gospels attempt to resolve the issues with an apocalyptic vision. Individual Christians, living with fifty shades of grey, try to work out our salvation between those camps.