Baruch, Hard Work, Desire, and No.

Today's first reading was from the prophet Baruch. I smiled when the reader said, "the prophet Baruch" because Baruch really isn't a prophet. His book is with the prophetic works, but he's really just a secretary. He followed Jeremiah and wrote down what he said. Rabbinical literature works this over, and in a midrash about him, he laments to God that he was not given the gift of prophecy when so many other followers of great prophets (Elisha, who followed Elijah, for instance) did become prophets themselves.

God answers that there is no need of a shepherd if there are no sheep. The people were in exile and did not need the words of a prophet.

So Baruch got passed over. He wrote down all those words and followed Jeremiah around and put up with all that, and never got the gift.

A few weeks back, I posted on Facebook that I was thankful that hard work had paid off. I was speaking about my math certification test, which it appears I passed, after studying calculus for 4 months and cramming for trigonometry. I passed it after a great effort to teach myself something I only vaguely remembered. It was hard work. And it paid off. I was so very grateful it did.

A blog friend, Linda, posted that she was glad I had phrased it the way I did--that I was grateful that it had paid off this time. Because oftentimes hard work does not pay off. The underdog team does not always come out on top like in the movies. You don't always get the job or the raise or the promotion. You don't always win, even if you worked hard. Even if you worked harder than anyone else.

Another friend is posting on facebook these days about her sister who is fighting cancer. I read the posts every day and think about the people I know who haven't won that fight. And they worked hard. They didn't just go, "welp, it's been a good run" and lie down and die. They fought. And they didn't win.

St. Rose Phillipine Duchesne was sent to St. Louis and on to St. Charles as a missionary. She had wanted to be a missionary to the native people of America since she was a child. This was one of her huge goals. She was finally chosen, at age 71, to go west to Kansas to work with the Potawatomi tribe. She wanted to teach...but even though she worked hard, she never could master their language.

Baruch was never a prophet.

My high school soccer team never won a single game my whole junior year.

St. Rose didn't get to teach the Potawatomi.

And many of us will die after valiant efforts to beat the cancer that kills us.

We will fail after hard work. Inevitably we will. So where does that leave us? What do we really want to win? What do we really want to achieve? Our goal is God and the work to achieve that isn't hard. God shows us the way and there's no way to fail if we only try. If we only say yes and live our every day lives in small perfect beautiful ways.

It certainly isn't as hard as calculus.