Eventide & Altar

God finally answers Job, and the answer is a list of questions. Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of darkness? Where is the dwelling place of light? Job cannot answer one of them. Then God says something that sounds almost like a joke. You must know, because you were born before them, and the number of your years is great.

He is teasing a man who has been at the center of his own suffering for thirty chapters. You may know something of that. Long life gives a person a great many opinions about how things should have gone. The years of your own life are many, and God still says the same thing. You were not there when the light was set on its road.

Job does not argue. He says, I am of little account. What can I answer you? I put my hand over my mouth. He has been carrying the weight of explaining, and now he can put it down.

You have been explaining things for a long time. To children, to employers, to a spouse, to yourself. Some of them were never yours to explain. The gates of death have been shown to you closer than to most, through the people you have lost. You do not need to understand them tonight. You may put your hand over your mouth.

The Sorrowful Mysteries tonight, since it is Friday. Offer the second mystery, the Scourging at the Pillar, for everyone whose suffering you have watched and could not explain.

• For the grace to stop explaining what God has not explained, we pray to the Lord.
• For everyone who lies awake trying to understand a loss, we pray to the Lord.
• For all who have died, that they have passed the gates of death and found the light, we pray to the Lord.

Sit in silence for two minutes tonight with your hand over your mouth, as Job did. Do not pray anything. Then say only, "Lord, I am of little account, and I am glad you are God."