Job gives us today one of the most beautiful professions of hope in the Old Testament:
“I know that my Redeemer lives.”
Everything around him seems to say the opposite.
He has lost almost everything. His friends do not understand him. His suffering has become almost unbearable.
Yet beneath all that darkness Job knows there is Someone greater than the darkness.
“My Redeemer lives.”
That word Redeemer is important. Job does not merely believe that things will somehow improve. His hope is personal. Someone will stand for him. Someone will vindicate him.
And then comes the extraordinary hope: “In my flesh I shall see God.”
The Christian hears those words in the light of Christ.
Our Redeemer truly lives.
He has passed through death and risen bodily from the grave.
And because He lives, death does not have the last word over us either.
That hope gives a new meaning to the Gospel.
Jesus sends out the seventy-two disciples and tells them:
“The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few.”
They are sent to announce that the Kingdom of God has come near.
They do not carry themselves. They carry Christ.
And that is where Saint Thérèse becomes such a wonderful saint for these readings.
She wanted desperately to be a missionary.
She wanted to carry the Gospel to distant peoples.
Yet she spent her religious life enclosed in a Carmel and died at only twenty-four.
By ordinary standards, she did almost nothing spectacular.
And yet the Church made her Patroness of the Missions.
There is the beautiful paradox.
Thérèse understood that the mission of the Church is sustained not only by those who travel, preach and baptise, but also by hidden prayer, sacrifice and love.
She discovered what she called her “little way”: doing small things with great love because nothing offered to Christ is truly small.
That matters for us.
Most of us will never preach to thousands or travel across the world as missionaries.
But every Christian shares in the mission of the Church.
A quiet prayer for someone who has lost faith.
An act of patience.
A sacrifice offered for a soul.
A simple word about Christ spoken without embarrassment.
These can become part of the harvest.
Thérèse teaches us that fruitfulness does not depend upon being noticed.
It depends upon belonging to Christ.
Job says: “My Redeemer lives.”
Jesus says: “The harvest is plentiful.”
Thérèse shows us how the two belong together.
Because Christ lives, there is always hope for souls.
And because souls matter to Him, no prayer, no sacrifice, no act of love offered for their salvation is ever wasted.
