Every Believer benefits from Job 19:1-20! It is a blessing to see how he and we are challenged by friends, family, rulers, and God in our time on earth. Problems that we face can only be solved if we let Job help us define them:
“How long will you afflict my spirit, grind me down with words… ten times you have humiliated me, have assailed me without shame… you exalt yourselves at my expense… God has dealt unfairly with me… I shout for help, but there is no justice… He has barred my way, and I cannot pass, veiled my way in darkness… stripped me of my glory, taken the diadem from my brow… He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone… He has uprooted my hope like a tree…”
His problems do not stop there! “He has kindled his wrath against me; He counts me as one of His enemies… His troops advance as one; they build up their roads to attack me, He counts me as one of His enemies…”
Job’s friends and family have joined with God in punishing him: “My family has withdrawn from me, my friends are wholly estranged… My relatives and companions neglect me, my guests have forgotten me… Even my maidservants neglect me, my guests have forgotten me… I am a stranger in their sight… My breath is abhorrent to my wife; I am loathsome to my very children.”
Then, Job gives us Today’s Catholic Reading, Job 19:21-27
“Job said: ‘Pity me, pity me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has struck me! Why do you hound me as though you were divine, and insatiably prey upon me?'”
Job wanted everyone for the next 4,000 years to remember how he suffered: “Oh, that my words were written down! Would that they were inscribed in a record; That with an iron chisel and with lead, they were cut in the rock forever!” (that is a “Hidden Catholic Prophecy” of the “lead” that would be used to make the type that printed paper pages, 3,500 years later, so that all may see Job’s “words forever”)
“As for me, I know my vindicator lives, and that He will at last stand forth upon the dust.” is Job’s “Hidden Catholic Prophecy” of Jesus: as the Prophets predicted, He would “stand forth upon the dust” and speak His Church-Creating Word to His First Catholic Pope: “And I say unto you: ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.'” His Church-Creating Catholic Word still “stands upon the dust”, and so do the 1.4 billion Catholics on earth who are blessed to respect God and His Prophets enough to “Be as Catholic as we can!”
Then, another “Hidden Catholic Prophecy”! “This will happen when my skin has been stripped off, and from my flesh, I will see God.”
Our “skin” symbolizes everything between our soul and God. Job and the best of believers will be among those blessed to know: “I will see for myself” because earthly concerns no longer keep us from seeing God! “I will see for myself, my own eyes, not another’s, will behold Him: my inmost being is consumed with longing.” That is another “Hidden Catholic Prophecy!” predicting that “longing” would be satisfied by receiving The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in Catholic Communion!
Then, Job gives us this warning about being “angry” with God! “Be afraid of the sword for yourselves, for your anger is a crime deserving the sword that you may know there is a judgment.”
Today, Psalm 27: 7-9, 13-14 helps us understand what Job predicted would guide our thoughts, with another “Hidden Catholic Prophecy”: “I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.”
Then, Today’s “Alleluia” from Mark 1:15 is yet another “Hidden Catholic Prophecy” that has told every believer for 2,000 years how to save our souls: “The Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in The Gospel.” He does not say: “Believe only in the parts of The Gospel that you want.”
Today’s “Gospel”, from Luke 10:1-12, tells us that “Jesus appointed seventy-two other disciples whom He sent ahead of Him in pairs to every town and place He intended to visit. He said to them: ‘The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few; so ask The Master of The Harvest to send out laborers for His harvest.”
That is a “Hidden Catholic Prophecy” of God’s blessed priests, religious, and His “laborers” who spent the next 2,000 years loving their neighbors enough to encourage them to “Be Catholic!” and save their immortal souls by letting God get through their “dusty skins” by Baptism and feed their souls with His Body and Blood that gives His Holy Food to every Catholic blessed to receive Catholic Communion, thereby being among “You are My friends if you obey My commands” whom He called us to be 10 times in John 6 and twice more at The Last Supper. (That may be The Longest Sentence Ever on catholicfundamentaism.com !)
Today’s last reference to “dust” is God’s Curse upon every “thick-skinned” person who refuses to heed His “laborers'” words: “‘The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.’ Whatever town you enter, and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say, “The dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you.'”
Then, this “Hidden Catholic Prophecy” specifically predicts what will happen to those who are too “thick-skinned with dust” to hear and heed the Prophesied Messiah’s “laborers”:
“Yet know this: The Kingdom of God is at hand. I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town.”
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Today’s Simple Rhyme: “The thinner our skin / the more we win!”
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