THE JOY OF SALVATION


SATURDAY, TWENTY SIXTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Job 42:1-3,5-6,12-17; Ps 119:66,71,75,91,125,130; Lk 10:17-24

Rejoice that your names are written in heaven

God allowed Satan to sourly try Job on different fronts and different levels of his life for his good purpose. God's purpose for allowing suffering and afflictions to come to us is to purify us from falsehood, wrong presuppositions, fears, and false beliefs. These prevent God from freely acting on our souls and taking complete possession of us. Through these afflictions, which God uses to purify the soul and make it his habitation, the soul gains an understanding of divine truth and a deep knowledge of God’s incomprehensibility. Job testifies to these gains after his afflictions. “I know that you are all-powerful: what you conceive, you can perform. I am the man who obscured your designs with my empty-headed words. I have been holding forth on matters I cannot understand, on marvels beyond me and my knowledge. I knew you then only by hearsay; but now, having seen you with my own eyes, I retract all I have said, and in dust and ashes I repent.” Our incomplete knowledge of God is always a problem for his salvific work in each of us. As our Lord prayed in John that we may know the Father, that knowledge is our salvation, we must do everything in our power to advance our knowledge of God. The salvation of our souls is to know God as Father. Job acquired this knowledge through the afflictions he suffered.

The suffering and the afflictions he passed through achieved their purpose in him because he kept his firm faith in God, understood that he was the one dealing with him, and never for once paid attention to Satan and his cohorts. Many of us spend almost the whole time of prayer on casting and binding evil spirits and evil people, sparing little or no time to worship God. Job focussed on God and prayed to him for deliverance from his afflictions, convinced that God is almighty and orders everything according to his good purpose. His action teaches us not to waste time in prayer with messengers of divine will but to raise our eyes and hands to the throne of the divine Majesty for deliverance. This understanding is in accord with what we read in the Gospel. The seventy-two the Lord sent out to preach the Gospel came back rejoicing and feeling good that devils obeyed them in the name of Jesus Christ. But the Lord redirected their joy to something more elevated and more salvific. That is the fact that God has written their names in heaven. “The seventy-two came back rejoicing. ‘Lord,’ they said ‘even the devils submit to us when we use your name.’” His reply to them after confirming the power they have received by believing in his name was: “Yet do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you; rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven.”

It is thrilling to have devils obey us in the name of Jesus Christ. We must bear in mind that their obedience to the name of Jesus Christ is that we may receive the gift of salvation given to any who believes and confesses the name of Jesus Christ. Since this gift is the ultimate will of the Father, the devils, who are afflicting a soul at the permission of God, give way to the ultimate will of the Father for our salvation. The ultimate will of the Father supersedes his provisional will for our purification and redirection. Our Lord admonished the disciples to rejoice in the fact that the ultimate will of the Father is fulfilled in them; their names are written in heaven. The Church has these powers and gifts because she is to preach the Gospel and proclaim the salvation won by Jesus Christ for all people of every tribe and language. Thus, even without casting the demons out, the advent of salvation in a soul, when a soul recognises God as Father, sends the demons parking. The casting out of demons without the soul recognising God as the Father does not guarantee the salvation of the soul. This ignorance will still make the demons to return to the soul with more afflictions. Hence, the Lord expressed joy and thanksgiving to the Father for revealing his fatherhood to those he had made children through faith in Jesus Christ. “Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to understanding that the slight and temporary suffering and afflictions we endure on earth are attracting inestimable weight of glory for us, for through them you advance us in the mystery of the Son and into deeper communion with you.    

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