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Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels
Job 38:1, 12–21; 40:3–5
Throughout the Book of Job,
Job longs to meet God.
He wants to present his case.
He wants to ask why.
Why this suffering?
Why this loss?
Why this silence?
Finally, God speaks.
But not in the way Job expected.
The Lord speaks from the storm.
He does not begin with an explanation.
He begins with creation.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Have you commanded the morning?
Have you entered the storehouses of snow?
Do you know where light lives?
These questions do not directly answer the problem of suffering.
But they change Job’s vision.
Job is brought out of the small room of his pain
and placed before the mystery of the universe.
He sees that he is a human being,
a creature,
small before the Lord of all creation.
God can do what Job cannot do.
God creates.
God orders.
God holds together what we cannot even understand.
Job cannot answer.
He says:
I am of small account.
What can I answer You?
I put my hand over my mouth.
This is not defeat.
It is humility.
Job does not receive all the answers.
But he encounters the living God.
And when a person truly encounters God,
words become small.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians of the Church,
wrote many beautiful things about God.
But after a deep experience of God near the end of his life,
he stopped writing.
He is said to have confessed:
I can write no more.
What I have written seems like straw.
This is the mystery.
Those who speak much about God
do not always know Him deeply.
Those who have truly touched the mystery of God
often become silent.
We live in a world where everyone has opinions about God.
God is like this.
God is not like that.
God should do this.
God should not allow that.
But Job teaches us another posture:
to stand before God with our questions,
our wounds,
our confusion,
and then to become silent before His greatness.
Today, on the Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels,
we also remember that our smallness does not mean abandonment.
The God who governs the universe
also sends His angels to guard us.
We are small,
but not forgotten.
We do not understand everything,
but we are not alone.
So when suffering comes,
bring your questions to God.
But also learn to place your hand over your mouth
and let His presence be greater than your need to explain.
Biblical Reflections on the Gospel of Matthew
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition,
copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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© 2025 Krakus.
Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
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