Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Job describes how life is often experienced. It’s a struggle and like a battle. There are victories but they are fleeting. There are empty months and sleepless nights. It’s quite difficult. And when we give it thought, it can seem like we go to sleep not knowing if we will have another day, only to wake up knowing that this day may be filled with sorrows just like the day before it. There are natural joys and beauty all around us but these, too, pass. Not one of the natural delights or any of the beauty of the world can actually satisfy the longing of the human heart. While we may be sorrowful about the eventual ending of this life, we long for something more than what this life can bring us.

Jesus in the Gospel is answering Job’s longing and our longing. He comes preaching and spreading the good news: to the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation, to prisoners, freedom, and to the sorrowful of heart, joy. He looks upon our illness with mercy. He triumphs over our battle with evil and sin. More than these things, which are signs of his mercy and love, he gives us himself. Jesus gives us his Body and Blood under the signs of bread and wine so that he can apply the power of his death to free us from our sins and so that we might rise with him to eternal life, be taken up with him into the life of the Trinity in his Ascension and share in his glory forever.

This is the good news: God does care. There is something more than this life. Through the gift of his Holy Spirit we can triumph in Jesus. And the news about how much God loves us is so good, that like Paul, we must share it with everyone. We become all things to all, servants of everyone we meet so that they, too, can share in the joy of knowing Jesus. It is an urgent necessity to do everything that we do for the sake of the gospel in order that we might be made sharers in the good news of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.