Out of the crisis of the Exile comes relief. The Lord acknowledges the pain his providence has inflicted on his people, but now it is time for reconciliation, restoration and renewal. When all is said and done the 'bottom line' is the one that is, literally, the bottom line of today's first reading: 'you shall be my people, and I will be your God'.
The gospel reading reminds us that our relationship with God is always in danger of slipping. Jesus is just as severe in his criticism of the Pharisees - blind guides leading the blind - as the Lord is in his description of the wound he has inflicted on his people.
Job struggled with the mystery of God's purpose in a philosophical way. He submitted his thoughts and feelings to the consideration of his friends but always remaining committed to the truth that he knew. He was not going to let God off the hook but instead called on God to share his own truth with him. Which he did - 'I am God, the one who is, and you are Job, the one who is not'. The words are not exactly those we find in the book of Job, they come rather from God speaking to Catherine of Siena, but they apply just as much to Job's situation as to hers.
It is the mystery at the heart of all dark nights - we know our sins and we know God's goodness, we know suffering and we know consolation, we know our weakness and we know what we desire, we know our longing to love and we know God's love for us. And still, trying to put together all those things we know, the elements of that equation which unites us with God, remains a quandary for us. It cannot be resolved philosophically, it seems. It leads inevitably to the cross of Jesus and his mystery.
That is where this quandary is at its most intense. That is where we see human sin and divine love exposed to our gaze as never before and as nowhere else. It is what comes from inside that matters, he says in today's gospel. From the heart exposed by human sin on Calvary comes the assurance of divine love, even in our darkest night, even in spite of our most serious sins, even when all seems lost. The Lord hears the groaning of the imprisoned and releases those doomed to die. But he does that not by helping them to avoid death but by bringing them beyond it to new life, to the kingdom of his beloved Son.
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