Monday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time
Readings of the day: Tobit 1:3, 2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6; Mark 12:1-12
This Mass was offered in memory of my maternal grandmother, Simone Salt. May she rest in peace.
Readings of the day: Tobit 1:3, 2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6; Mark 12:1-12
This Mass was offered in memory of my maternal grandmother, Simone Salt. May she rest in peace.
Why do good people suffer? This question does not have an easy answer, even for us as people of faith.
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Justin, a martyr of Rome almost two hundred years before the Roman Empire tolerated Christianity and then made it its official religion. St. Justin’s goal in his teaching and beautiful writings was to convince people of other faiths (Jews and pagans alike) of the truth of the Christian faith; that Christ is the Son of God by pointing to the way Christians lived. His way of teaching by conversation is called the “moral apology” or defense of the moral rightness of Christian faith. St. Justin, a good and faithful man, a saint, suffered greatly for his gentle way of teaching and was eventually killed for his faith.
Our opening prayer of today’s Mass speaks of “the folly of the Cross” that “wondrously taught St. Justin the Martyr the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ.” Why do good people like St. Justin suffer? Why are there more martyrs within the last century than in all previous centuries of Christian history combined?
Might we point to questions like these and wonder at the folly of when good people suffer? These questions have no easy answers. Our readings today speak to this same question. We are introduced to Tobit, who has been exiled to Nineveh, in our first reading today. Tobit searches for one of his own people who has been murdered, so that he can give him a dignified burial.
Would we not think that Tobit’s profound act of mercy would be praised? But instead Tobit is mocked both by the Ninevites and by his own people of Israel. To contact the dead physically would bring Tobit ritual impurity. Worse yet, his own life is endangered because he dares to bury a person who has been murdered. Why do good people like Tobit suffer?
Jesus’ parable of the tenants in our Gospel reading is the ultimate example of a good person experiencing suffering. After sending several servants into a vineyard and seeing them mistreated by the vineyard’s tenants, the vineyard owner sends in his own son. Instead of respecting the vineyard owner’s son as hoped, they plot to kill him and seize the inheritance!
We know that, in Jesus’ parable, God is the vineyard owner. Jesus is the innocent Son who is killed. Why does the innocent Son, Jesus, suffer? The Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth once said that the only way to make sense of suffering by innocent people is that Christ suffered and died for us. And yet why do some experience extreme poverty? Why are so many in our world threatened and killed for their faith? Why natural disasters that claim many lives? Why do young children experience terrible illnesses, and their families who care for them suffer also? Why did my grandmother, Simone, for whom we pray in this Mass, suffer for years in near-silence with dementia?
We have no easy answers. But God’s promise is that, by uniting ourselves to the “folly of” Christ’s Cross, our suffering is made temporary. We gain “surpassing knowledge” of Christ’s suffering for us. And we who share in Christ’s suffering will also have a share in his resurrection.
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Justin, a martyr of Rome almost two hundred years before the Roman Empire tolerated Christianity and then made it its official religion. St. Justin’s goal in his teaching and beautiful writings was to convince people of other faiths (Jews and pagans alike) of the truth of the Christian faith; that Christ is the Son of God by pointing to the way Christians lived. His way of teaching by conversation is called the “moral apology” or defense of the moral rightness of Christian faith. St. Justin, a good and faithful man, a saint, suffered greatly for his gentle way of teaching and was eventually killed for his faith.
Our opening prayer of today’s Mass speaks of “the folly of the Cross” that “wondrously taught St. Justin the Martyr the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ.” Why do good people like St. Justin suffer? Why are there more martyrs within the last century than in all previous centuries of Christian history combined?
Might we point to questions like these and wonder at the folly of when good people suffer? These questions have no easy answers. Our readings today speak to this same question. We are introduced to Tobit, who has been exiled to Nineveh, in our first reading today. Tobit searches for one of his own people who has been murdered, so that he can give him a dignified burial.
Would we not think that Tobit’s profound act of mercy would be praised? But instead Tobit is mocked both by the Ninevites and by his own people of Israel. To contact the dead physically would bring Tobit ritual impurity. Worse yet, his own life is endangered because he dares to bury a person who has been murdered. Why do good people like Tobit suffer?
Jesus’ parable of the tenants in our Gospel reading is the ultimate example of a good person experiencing suffering. After sending several servants into a vineyard and seeing them mistreated by the vineyard’s tenants, the vineyard owner sends in his own son. Instead of respecting the vineyard owner’s son as hoped, they plot to kill him and seize the inheritance!
We know that, in Jesus’ parable, God is the vineyard owner. Jesus is the innocent Son who is killed. Why does the innocent Son, Jesus, suffer? The Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth once said that the only way to make sense of suffering by innocent people is that Christ suffered and died for us. And yet why do some experience extreme poverty? Why are so many in our world threatened and killed for their faith? Why natural disasters that claim many lives? Why do young children experience terrible illnesses, and their families who care for them suffer also? Why did my grandmother, Simone, for whom we pray in this Mass, suffer for years in near-silence with dementia?
We have no easy answers. But God’s promise is that, by uniting ourselves to the “folly of” Christ’s Cross, our suffering is made temporary. We gain “surpassing knowledge” of Christ’s suffering for us. And we who share in Christ’s suffering will also have a share in his resurrection.
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