Today’s readings (Mass for the school children.)
Today I want to talk to you about one of the most important virtues in the life of a person who follows Jesus. And that virtue is humility. Humility is the antidote to the sin of pride, which is one of the most devastating sins there is. When we commit the sin of pride, what we are doing is saying we don’t need God, and when we don’t need God we put him out of our lives completely and can’t have a relationship with God. When that happens, we are destined for nothing but sadness, which is why humility is so important.
Humility helps us to recognize that God is in control. It helps us to rejoice that God takes care of us in good times and bad, and that he helps us to be the best that we can be in every facet of life.
In our readings today, Job has to be reminded of humility. He’s had some really bad things happen to him in the part of the story that comes before our reading today, and so he takes God to task for it. He lectures God about how God should care more for him, since he has done nothing but love God all his life long. God reminds Job that God sees the big picture, and Job cannot. God reminds Job that God knows how to do his job, and he has never needed Job’s advice on how to do it.
We do the same thing all the time. When we are having hard times, our prayer can sound a lot like telling God how to do his job. “Dear Lord, help Susie to remember that I’m her friend and she should be spending more time with me.” “Please God tell my teacher to give me an A on that test.” We’ve all done it. But we have to remember that God sees the big picture and he knows how everything is going to turn out.
We also have to remember, just as much as Job did, that even though God sees the big picture and everything that’s out there, he also sees us too. Even with everything happening in the world, God still sees us and loves us and cares about us individually. God still wants us to be happy with him forever and wants to love us more than we can ever imagine.
All we have to do is embrace a little humility. When we pray, we should remember that God knows the times and seasons of our lives and that he wants us to be happy. Even when we are going through hard times, as often we will, he will work in our lives to bring us to happiness, if we let him do it in his time. And along the way, he won’t ever leave us. That’s all that we need. Because if God is walking next to us, nothing in heaven or on earth can ever take us away from God and his love for us.
God was with Jesus even when he was dying on the Cross. God showed his love for Jesus by raising him from the dead. And all of that was a foretaste of our own lives. Yes, sometimes we may have to go through our own little crosses, but God won’t abandon us, and he will raise us up. All we have to do is let him, and not try to tell him how to work everything out. He knows how better than we do.