Stilling the Waves

The Book of Job is the great 2600 (more or less)-year-old meditation on why bad things happen to good people. In it, God permits Satan, one of his heavenly court, to test Job’s true faith. God says that Job is his true servant, and Satan says, that’s only because you’ve gone easy on him. So God gives Satan permission to come down on poor Job, visiting death and disease on this rich man until he is reduced to a mass of boils on a pile of ashes, and his wife tells him to “curse God and die.”

Job has three friends who come by and spend many chapters trying to convince Job that he must have sinned somehow because, well, here’s his misfortune, there must be a sin around here somewhere! But Job inspects his conscience and cannot find that guilty sin.

Job’s problem, of course, is that he is assuming that wealth is a blessing for righteous living and that poverty and disease are due to sin. In the end, God has a problem with this. Job has become self-righteous in his righteousness. And so God appears in a storm cloud and says, look, I am creator of heaven and earth and you are not. Accept your afflictions with humility.

All of which is the background of these majestic verses of the First Reading, which prefigure Jesus calming waves and fears in the Gospel reading. Jesus constantly rejects the notion that misfortune is due to sin, both explicitly in the Man Born Blind in John:9 and in his continuous healing of those who simply declare their faith in him. Jesus is God With Us in our joys and in our suffering.

Our Annual Catholic Appeal progress is at about 71%. Aside from the worthiness of the campaign, given the current Archdiocesan strategic planning process, it is better to be above our goal than below it.

The Archdiocese of Western Washington has been a leader in developing safe environment and stewardship practices for over thirty years. It manages health insurance, retirement and other benefits for staff and provides payroll services. It oversees the financial practices of parishes and advises on the management of facilities. It advises on religious education curricula and runs one of the largest education systems in the State of Washington. It recruits, educates and manages the retirement funds of priests. It contributes to the retirement and health fund of sisters.

Father Maurice is now in the last two weeks of his stay with us. I personally am very thankful for him. Let us send him off with an excess over our ACA goal! If you haven’t made a gift, please go online at st-therese.cc, click on the ACA in the photo scroll or scroll down the page to the “Donate Now” button. Either way, you end up in the ACA window; click on the bold heading of your choice under “Ways to Give”.

Ministry Opportunities
To help run our livestream equipment, contact deaconmcnabb@gmail.com

To make and deliver lunches for the Matt Talbot Center, contact Ellie Wakefield at ellieawake@gmail.com.

To join the Spirit Choir, contact Diane Figaro at diane.cornell.figaro@gmail.com.

Collections
July 1, 2020 - June 16, 2021 $401,737
Where we need to be:         $375,167
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