Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

 Lectionary: 248

"For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes...."
These were their thoughts, but they erred; for their wickedness blinded them, and they knew not the hidden counsels of God....

Revelation comes to us as a long hidden mystery; but it is also a truth apparent to reasonable people since the foundation of the world. 

It is so obvious that wicked people often think they know it. Like the foolish in today's first reading, they might even tell us what God thinks, what God knows, and how God acts. Even the faithful will adopt that insolence occasionally, as when someone says, "I don't think God cares what you do here." or, "It surely doesn't matter to God."

Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't, but I do not dare to say what God thinks about anything. And I'm pretty sure the statement, "God thinks" as if God's brain is like yours or mine, is blasphemous. As the Prophet says, 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways....
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Is 55:8

Let's be careful about how we speak of God, and not imitate the ways of the wicked. 

Saint Paul says of this deep mystery:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church,
of which I am a minister in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me to bring to completion for you the word of God, the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past. But now it has been manifested to his holy ones,
to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; it is Christ in you, the hope for glory. Colossians 1: 24-27

We have to notice the context of this passage: Saint Paul is speaking out of his suffering in a Roman jail someplace.  What we know of God costs us more than memorizing catechism lessons or attending a Bible class. What we know of God comes from our sharing in "the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church."

It is also born of that willingness to suffer with Christ. Not all suffering is redemptive, as Saint Peter warns us in his First Letter: "But let no one among you be made to suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or as an intriguer." 

Though it's true that some hardened criminals have found redemption in the penitentiary, it came with the honest admission that they belong there, and the government had exercised mercy with its justice.

We should we not go in search of pain; it comes in search of us soon enough. Aging, the loss of loved ones, disappointments, failures, accidents, sickness: life is generous that way. In the Spirit of Jesus we make something useful of sorrow. We turn it to prayer; we remember our sins and regard the misery as just punishment. We offer it for those who suffer the same afflictions without the comforts we are offered amid this distress. 

We do not heed the advice of Job's importunate wife, "Curse God and die!" Rather, we wait on that vindication that is promised to all God's people. It will be revealed to the wicked and the righteous, who will receive the Good News quite differently.