Thought for the Day – 27 June – Meditations with Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)
PATIENCE
Meditations for a Month
The Source of Job’s Patience
- How was it that Job was able to bear his manifold calamities,with patience?
It was not that he did not feel them acutely, or that he wrapped himself in a mantle of self-reliant pride. It was simply due to his great subservience to the Will of God.
His motto was: ‘As it hath pleased the Lord, so let it be done.‘
He was quite satisfied with whatever was the Divine good pleasure, and so, whatever happened, he could say from his heart ‘Blessed be the Name of the Lord,‘ he could thank God for it, however great the pain and misery resulting to himself. - There was a further secret of Job’s patience.
He placed his hopes of happiness in the future, not the present: ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, I know that in my flesh, I shall see God.’
When man thus realises the love of Jesus, and is able to say. ‘my Redeeme’ (as St Paul said, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me’) he has, amid all his troubles, a source of consolation which never can dry up. He is able to look to the joyful day of the resurrection.
In my trials, I must thus look to Jesus and think of the reward to come which shall richly compensate for all present pain. - Job was not only perfectly resigned but, ready for fresh sufferings, if it were God’s Will and, if no rebellion in his heart should follow from the additional calamities.
‘Let this be my comfort that afflicting me, He spare not and that I may not contradict the words of the Holy One.’
Is this my spirit? Have I the generosity to pray for more sufferings and more humiliations? At least I will pray that God may send me, whatever He sees will cleanse me from sin and help me to love Him more and more.
AnaStpaul 