Now My Eye Sees You

Almost every Catholic first meets God by hearsay. That’s how faith ordinarily arrives. A grandmother’s rosary, a catechism teacher, a priest who explained the Mass, a parent who made us go. Saint Paul says as much: faith comes from what is heard (Romans 10:17). But hearsay has a way of settling into an arrangement. We know a great deal about God; we could pass a quiz on him, and somewhere along the way we stopped expecting to meet him. A God we’ve only heard about is easier to live with. He stays in the catechism, where the answers are tidy, and he never shows up in a whirlwind asking questions of his own.

Job knew God that way also. Job was a good man; his book opens by calling him blameless and upright (Job 1:1). After forty-one chapters of loss and argument, God has answered him out of the storm, and today Job says the line his whole book has been building toward: “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee.” In the Gospel, the seventy-two come back from their mission still out of breath, and Jesus turns to them privately: “Blessed are the eyes which see what you see!”

Today the Church in the United States keeps the memorial of Saint Theodora Guérin, a French Sister of Providence who crossed an ocean in 1840 to found a community in the Indiana woods. She trusted a providence she couldn’t yet see. Here’s the question these readings put to you and me: are we content with a God we’ve only heard about?

The Readings

First Reading: Job 42:1-3, 5-6, 12-17

Then Job answered the Lord: “I know that thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

And the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first Jemimah; and the name of the second Keziah; and the name of the third Keren-happuch. And in all the land there were no women so fair as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers. And after this Job lived a hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, four generations. And Job died, an old man, and full of days.

Gospel: Luke 10:17-24

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

Then turning to the disciples he said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

Scriptural Analysis

Today’s first reading is the end of the Book of Job. The first six verses are Job’s last words in the poem, his reply to the God who has spent four chapters questioning him from the whirlwind. The Navarre commentators note that Job answers two challenges. To the first, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2), he quotes the question back at himself and confesses that he spoke without knowing all the facts, “without appreciating the harmony with which creation is imbued.” They call it “a sort of ‘sapiential’ response,” the answer of a man who has finally become wise. To the second, “I will question you, and you shall declare to me” (Job 38:3), his reply “is full of faith.”¹ Notice his first words: “I know that thou canst do all things.” On Thursday the Church heard Job say, from the ash heap, “I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 19:25). He knew it then by faith, against everything he could see. He knows it now because God has come.

Then verse 5, the hinge of the whole book. The Hebrew for “the hearing of the ear” is shema ozen (SHEH-mah OH-zen), literally “report of ear,” and Marvin Pope, in the Anchor Bible, simply translates it as “hearsay.” In what sense has Job seen God? Pope’s answer is quiet: “We must assume that Job is now convinced of what he had doubted, viz., God’s providential care.” Job had demanded that God vindicate him, and “now that God has spoken directly to him, Job’s demands have been met.” The Navarre editors read the verse as a personal encounter. God “has manifested himself in person,” and Job has seen him “as Moses and the prophets” did: “This meeting, more than the words he has heard, is what brings about his conversion.” They quote the sixteenth-century Augustinian friar Fray Luis de León: “It is one thing to hear your voice and another to see you before our eyes; for just as all things are made clear in the light of the sun, and darkness and every trace of shadow is banished, so the sight of your resplendent face, when it dawns over the soul, dissipates all ignorance and error.”² In the margin beside verse 5 the Navarre Bible prints a cross-reference worth following: Luke 2:30, where Simeon holds the infant Christ and says, “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”

Verse 6 is the one that most people stumble on: “therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” It sounds like self-hatred. Pope points out that the Hebrew verb has no object at all; the RSV supplies “myself” from the Greek Septuagint. The verb is ma’as (mah-AHS), to reject or refuse, and Pope says it “is not used of self-loathing.” The better reading supplies “my words”: “What Job now despises, refuses, rejects is his former attitude and utterances.”³ The man who sees God lets go of his own speeches.

The Lectionary skips verses 7 to 11, where God rebukes the three friends, “for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has,” and restores Job’s fortunes “when he had prayed for his friends” (Job 42:7, 10). Some readers find the happy ending too neat, as though it took back the book’s whole argument about suffering and reward. Navarre’s answer is simple: “The epilogue displays the mercy of God who, as supreme judge, desires that all should be saved; Job, in his case, has found salvation through suffering.”⁴

Then the blessing, with the arithmetic in plain view. Seven thousand sheep become fourteen thousand, and the camels, oxen and she-asses double too (Job 1:3). The sons go unnamed, but the daughters are Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-happuch, which Pope renders Dove, Cinnamon and Horn of Kohl, the powdered antimony women used to paint their eyes. “And their father gave them inheritance among their brothers.” Daughters normally inherited only when there was no son, as with the daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 27:1-8), so Pope calls this “remarkable and unique in the OT.” Job saw “four generations,” and Pope’s comment is lovely: “To see one’s grandchildren is the crowning joy of a full life.”⁵

“And Job died, an old man, and full of days.” Navarre notes that Genesis says the same of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 25:8; 35:29), and it quotes Saint Thomas Aquinas, for whom the phrase means “an abundance of spiritual graces, by whose power Job entered into the glory that lasts forever.” Saint Zeno of Verona saw the risen Christ in Job’s restoration: as Job recovered his health and his wealth, the Lord gives those who believe in him health and immortality besides.⁶ The Greek translators felt the same pull. Pope records the line the Septuagint adds after verse 17: “It is written, however, that he will rise again with those whom the Lord raises up.”⁷

The Gospel, which picks up where Thursday’s left off. Jesus had sent the seventy-two ahead of him with no purse and no sandals, and warned them about towns that would refuse them. (The RSVCE printed above says seventy; the Lectionary follows the manuscripts that read seventy-two.) Pablo Gadenz observes that, with rejection in the forecast, “one would expect them to come back discouraged.” They come back rejoicing instead, and Gadenz says they succeeded “because they invoke the name of Jesus.”⁸

Jesus answers, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Luke Timothy Johnson notes that this is the first time Luke uses the name Satan, and he adds the detail that ties today’s readings together: “The role of Satan as tester is established by Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7.” On Monday the Church read that scene, the Adversary walking into the court of heaven to accuse the most upright man on earth. Today Jesus reports his fall. Gadenz hears Isaiah’s taunt behind it, “How you have fallen from the heavens, O Morning Star” (Isaiah 14:12), and says the disciples’ mission is “contributing to the devil’s downfall,” though the struggle “is not over yet.”⁹ Saint Gregory the Great, quoted in the Catena Aurea, sees why Jesus told the story to men flushed with success: he “related the account of the fall which the teacher of pride suffered; that they might learn by the example of the author of pride, what they would have to dread from the sin of pride.”¹⁰ So Jesus redirects their joy: “rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Gadenz identifies the image as “the book of life” (Psalm 69:28; Revelation 3:5), and Theophylact, in the Catena, says those names are written “in the memory and grace of God.”¹¹

“In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.” Gadenz points out that Luke uses this verb elsewhere only for Mary at the start of the Magnificat (Luke 1:47). The word is ēgalliasato (ay-gal-lee-AH-sah-toh), exultation that can’t keep quiet. The disciples rejoiced over the demons; Jesus rejoices over his Father, who has hidden “these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes.” Gadenz traces the reversal to Isaiah, “the wisdom of their wise men shall perish” (Isaiah 29:14).¹² Saint Bede, in the Catena, guards against a lazy reading: Jesus sets the wise beside “babes; that is, the humble, to shew that He condemned pride,” and quickness of mind was never the problem. Gregory reads “yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will” as a lesson in humility before the counsel of God: “that cannot be unjust which seemed good to the Just One.”¹³ Job learned that sentence in the whirlwind. He spoke of “things too wonderful for me,” and God made him a babe. The Catechism hears the depth of Jesus’ heart in this prayer: “His exclamation, ‘Yes, Father!’ expresses the depth of his heart, his adherence to the Father’s ‘good pleasure,’” a yes that echoes his mother’s at the Annunciation and looks ahead to his prayer in the garden.¹⁴

Then Jesus turns to the disciples privately. “Blessed are the eyes which see what you see!” Johnson notes that this is the seventh beatitude in Luke’s Gospel, and here the stress falls on seeing. Gadenz connects it to Simeon: the disciples, like the old man in the Temple, “have received the blessing of seeing God’s salvation with their own eyes” (Luke 2:26, 30). Many prophets and kings longed for it. Moses and Elijah finally saw it at the Transfiguration (Luke 9:30), and David only “foresaw” it (Acts 2:31).¹⁵

Put the two readings side by side, and they meet at Simeon. The Navarre editors set Luke 2:30 beside Job 42:5; Gadenz sets Simeon beside the seventy-two. Job is one of the people Jesus means. He longed to see God, and when God came, he came in a storm and spoke about the dawn and the sea and the wild goats. Job saw him through what he had made, and it was enough to end his complaint. The disciples see the Son of God himself, on the road to Jerusalem, rejoicing in the Holy Spirit in front of them. If Job’s sight ended in a double blessing and four generations, theirs is blessed beyond counting.

Daily Application

The interior movement these readings ask for is to let God move from hearsay to sight, and to let him take back our speech when he does. The second part explains our reluctance about the first. A God we’ve only heard about never asks us to withdraw anything. When Job sees God, he withdrew a great deal. What Job rejected was his own words and attitudes. He kept his dignity, and in the next two verses God calls him “my servant Job” four times. Real contrition looks like that. It drops the case we’ve been building and lets God be God.

So go where he can be seen. The disciples saw Jesus with their eyes; we meet the same Lord in the Eucharist. Today is Saturday, a good day to sit before the Blessed Sacrament for 15 minutes quietly. Bring Job’s sentence and pray it honestly: Lord, I’ve heard of you by the hearing of the ear. Let my eye see you. Then stay long enough to be looked at. Fray Luis said the sight of God’s face, when it dawns over the soul, clears away ignorance and error. That’s God’s work. Your part is to show up and stop talking for a while.

Then check what you’re rejoicing in. The seventy-two came home thrilled with results, and Jesus turned their joy toward something steadier. Most of us have our own version: the parish program that took off, the argument about the faith we finally won, the grown child who went back to Mass after years of our prayers. Thank God for all of it, and then rejoice that your name is written in heaven, in the memory and grace of God. That joy rests on his faithfulness, and it survives a bad week. And remember Gregory: Jesus told the story of Satan’s fall to men who were feeling very successful.

Last, notice what Job did right before his restoration. He prayed for the three men who had spent most of the book telling him he deserved his suffering (Job 42:10). Name the person whose verdict on you still stings, and pray for them by name today.

Saint Theodora Guérin knew both hearsay and sight. Franciscan Media tells how her father was murdered when she was 15, how an illness in the novitiate left her with fragile health for life, and how she and five sisters arrived at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods in 1840 only to learn that their French superiors had already decided they would form a new congregation under her leadership. Fires, crop failures, and prejudice against Catholic sisters followed. She told her community, “Have confidence in the Providence that so far has never failed us. The way is not yet clear. Grope along slowly. Do not press matters; be patient, be trustful.” Another time she asked, “With Jesus, what shall we have to fear?”¹⁶ That’s Job’s lesson learned without the whirlwind, and it’s the Gospel’s answer to serpents and scorpions.

Ask to see God today. Let him take back your speeches, rejoice that your name is written in heaven, and trust the Providence that has never failed you.

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Notes

1. ↑ The Navarre Bible, Old Testament, commentary on Job, by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre (Dublin: Four Courts Press; New York: Scepter Publishers, 2004), 152.
2. ↑ Marvin H. Pope, Job, 3rd ed., The Anchor Bible (Doubleday, 1973), 348; Navarre Bible, commentary on Job, 152, quoting Fray Luis de León, Expositio libri Iob, 42, 6.
3. ↑ Pope, Job, 348-349.
4. ↑ Navarre Bible, commentary on Job, 153.
5. ↑ Pope, Job, 348, 353-354.
6. ↑ Navarre Bible, commentary on Job, 154-155, quoting Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Iob, 42, 17, and Saint Zeno of Verona, Tractatus 1, 15.
7. ↑ Pope, Job, 354.
8. ↑ Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 204.
9. ↑ Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 168; Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 204-205.
10. ↑ Saint Gregory the Great, Moralia 23, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, vol. 3, St. Luke (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), on Luke 10:17-20.
11. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 206; Theophylact, quoted in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, St. Luke, on Luke 10:17-20.
12. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 207.
13. ↑ Saint Bede and Saint Gregory the Great, Moralia 25, quoted in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, St. Luke, on Luke 10:21-22.
14. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 2603.
15. ↑ Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 169; Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 208.
16. ↑ “Saint Theodora Guérin,” Saint of the Day, Franciscan Media, accessed October 2, 2026, franciscanmedia.org.

Books Cited

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• Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, The Navarre Bible: Wisdom Books (Four Courts Press / Scepter Publishers, 2004)
• Marvin H. Pope, Job, 3rd ed., The Anchor Bible 15 (Doubleday, 1973)
• Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2018)
• Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Liturgical Press, 1991)
• Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, four-volume edition (Baronius Press)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Doubleday / Image, 2003)