Today’s readings: Job 7, 1-4.6-7; 1 Corinthians 9, 16-19.22-23; Mark 1, 29-39.

Suffering is always an issue for all of us, whether one is a believer or not. It uncovers the truth of our human condition; it puts into question the meaning of life; and it shakes the foundations of all that believers profess when they speak of God. Even God is unhappy in the face of suffering, be it of the innocent or of those who procure it by themselves.

Job is the classical instance in the Hebrew Scriptures where the issue of suffering is personalised. In the face of all that he undergoes, and in the face of the challenges by those around him, Job holds his ground and remains steadfast in his faith in God. Yet, in his down to earth attitude, and in the absence of rational explanations to his ultimate questions, he turns to a kind of weary philosophy that makes him perceive life on earth as “nothing more than pressed service”, fretting “till twilight falls”. He is a symbol of all those who in life wonder at their pain.

Jesus, in the face of suffering, moves further on from the Old Testament stereotype, understanding that it is directly connected with people’s conduct. In the symbolic order of Judaism, illness was associated with impurity or sin, a state that meant exclusion from full status in the body politic. In the New Testament, St Mark’s Jesus seeks always to restore the social wholeness denied to many, on grounds of sickness or even of status vis-a-vis religion.

Mark’s gospel articulates in the first place Jesus’s compassion for the poor and ailing masses. He responds to the needy masses despite the fact that his preferential ministry to the poor provokes opposition and condemnation.

This aspect of Mark’s narrative needs to be contextualised in the social reality of the time. Disease and physical disability were an inseparable part of the cycle of poverty. Jesus’s healing ministry is thus portrayed as an essential part of his struggle to bring concrete liberation to the oppressed and the marginal of Palestinian society.

The deepest and most intriguing questions never changed since Job and since the time of Jesus. A myriad of responses have been explored since, taking a scientific or a faith perspective or even both. Even in faith, the search for meaning is no easy endeavour. What we need is the right attitude, because as Jonathan Sacks writes in his book The Great Partnership. God, Science and the Search for Meaning, “the cure of bad religion is good religion, not no religion”.

St Paul in the second reading from 1 Corinthians goes beyond the problematic of human suffering. What instead he highlights is precisely the need to let the gospel of Jesus Christ provide the right attitude: “Woe to me if I did not preach the gospel!”

Because the gospel is about the integrity of the human person, and if it is not proclaimed in connection with the realities we live, there would be something missing in our preaching. This should be an eye-opener for those of us who are simply untouched by the faith they profess and by the gospel proclaimed.

There is, of course, truth in the words of Job: “Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind”. We all attend, many a time helplessly, even in our days to a human fragility, in body and spirit, that darkens our dreams and weakens our will to believe in better times. There is ample sickness, diseases, solitude, restlessness that call on us to face life as it is. Even a simple visit to an old people’s home can render truthfully the idea and makes us realise better how fragile we all are. That is the human condition.

But if all this sounds threatening to the integrity of each and every person, the therapeutic faith proclaimed by Mark’s Jesus gives the other side of the coin of our condition and is reassuring where our wholeness and where the cure of the soul is concerned.