HOMILY for Fri in Week 2 of Lent
Gen 37:3-4. 12-13. 17-28; Ps 104; Mt 21:33-43. 45f.
It’s sometimes said that God draws straight with crooked lines. But this suggests that God directly wills evil whereas in fact God doesn’t desire crookedness or will evil as such. Rather, as St Thomas says, “God allows evils to happen in order to bring about a greater good”. God draws straight out of our crooked lines; it is he who straightens what we make crooked; God’s grace actualizes the fullest potential for the good from Man’s evil acts which are lacking in good.
Hence, although Joseph’s brothers deal with him cruelly and sinfully, God, in his Providence, turns the wicked act of the brothers to a greater good. For as the story unfolds, Joseph would eventually become the instrument of salvation for God’s people. Despite being falsely accused and imprisoned, Joseph remains faithful to God and steadfast in hope. Thus, God is able to use Joseph to save his father, Jacob, and his brothers from starvation when the famine comes. We thus see God drawing straight out of the crooked ways of the brothers.
The figure of Joseph, and his role as a kind of saviour for Israel anticipates the person of Christ, who is also falsely accused and enters into the pit of death, but who rises from it to be our Saviour. For all humanity, who are Christ’s brothers and sisters, are saved from the starvation and death that is sin through the faithfulness and obedience of Jesus Christ. In the saving work of Christ we see most clearly the mystery of God’s Providence and goodness at work, bringing a greater good, indeed, the greatest good, from our evil. As the Exsultet puts it on Easter night: “O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”
We are sometimes left wondering and speechless in the face of evil done and suffered. The patriarch Joseph, we note in today’s reading, is silent as his brothers’ crooked ways are inflicted on him. And yet, Joseph’s life reminds us that God is working out his good purposes, drawing straight out of the crooked. Moreover, as the Cross shows us, from which our Lord hangs in silence too, God will vindicate the just. For God’s grace, we believe, is at work to bring a greater good out of the evil that Man does and endures. Hence the 14th-century English mystic, Julian of Norwich said: “Grace transforms our failings full of dread into abundant, endless comfort… our failings full of shame into a noble, glorious rising… our dying full of sorrow into holy, blissful life”.
So, let us imitate the faith and steadfast hope of Joseph, and draw strength from Christ, confident that God is at work in our world and in our lives to bring about our greatest good. Hence, we said in today’s Entrance Antiphon: “In you, O Lord, I put my trust, let me never be put to shame… for you indeed are my refuge”.
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