The story of Job is like a roller-coaster: He has made it big — happy home, good material resources, and he’s a regular religious observer. The Lord brags to Satan about him — what a virtuous man Job is — but Satan says that Job’s prayers might stop if his bank account was blocked. So, the Lord reluctantly lets Satan do his worst, and poor Job doesn’t know what hit him. He speaks about the misery and emptiness of life. When some friends of his come along, offering religious comfort, it doesn’t seem to help poor Job.

We’re far removed from Job in time, but not that removed from his experience.

We would have to be hermits to avoid seeing the pain and misery into which human life is so often plunged. We see marriages heading for the rocks, people with nervous breakdowns, teenagers at odds with their parents, destruction and violence in our cities. At times it seems that the world in which we live is full of immorality, injustice, exploitation, and hypocrisy for its systems to operate. It leads some clever people like Stephen Fry to call God a sadist. We can repeat, maybe with less polish, most of the sentiments that Job speaks in the first reading.

What might a Christian have to say to Job — or to people who think like Stephen Fry? What can we say to the many brothers and sisters of Job who live in this world? There is no easy catechism answer to take away the pain they find in living? Maybe in dire situations it is not our task to speak, but to listen. The cry of emptiness, loneliness, despair, and pain may not be the most profound insight into life, but the cry is real, honest, and strong. In a way, that cry is part of the Christian message; we even find it in the Savior’s mouth on Good Friday. That cry today is part of the Word spoken now, and it demands response.

What is our response to people in pain? To some extent, we can see that response at work in the Gospel passage: the sick come to Jesus, and he heals them. He does not debate the meaning of suffering — he stretches out his hand and heals. Our first reaction is to think that here we cannot be imitators of Christ. But that is only true if we take the miracles of Jesus in a narrow sense. We cannot make illness go away with a simple action, as Christ could. But we can respond, and we can help to ease the suffering. We can let Christ himself act in us to fill the loneliness, care for the sick, to be with the fearful and the heartbroken.

Today’s Scripture challenges us to listen and to share. We are to follow Jesus not only in our happy times but also in times of loneliness, and even of tragedy. Like him we seek ways to reach out with love toward people who are worried, sick or depressed — to let the Lord use us to bless those situations somehow. Then when he calls us to himself — he will have let us be his eyes, his smile, his ears, and his hands, quietly at work in the world.