Satan uses all sorts of things to trip us up, and he can be seen front and center in today’s readings. In the first reading, he has this curious dialogue with God about Job, who will suffer much in the readings to come this week. Satan points out that it is no big deal that Job has remained faithful, as much as God has blessed him so far in life. He wagers when that’s all taken away, things would change in a hurry. But Job’s faithfulness is deeply-rooted, and Satan was wrong, it wasn’t just because of his blessings. Job remains faithful and does nothing disrespectful of God.
In the Gospel reading today, Satan uses envy to stir up trouble. First it’s envy of one another when the disciples waste their time trying to figure out which of them was the greatest, kind of like some kids trying to figure out which one was dad’s favorite. Even when Jesus puts that to rest, they then get envious of some people not of their group casting out demons in Jesus’ name.
What’s important is that we need to discern when Satan is working on us. We don’t want to be used as his plaything. We need to be serious about our faithfulness and say with Job, “blessed be the name of the Lord!”