We continue our story of Jacob from Genesis today in our daily Mass. Jacob is traveling to meet his brother Esau in order to reconcile with him. Jacob’s messengers had already met with Esau and he is amenable with meeting with Jacob. Jacob has lived in exile, but he has become very prosperous with many livestock and a large family. Today, we hear of Jacob’s struggle with an unnamed man, with Jacob wrestling with him all night until dawn. In the wrestling match, the man sees he cannot prevail, so he knocks Jacob’s hip out of the socket. I had a hip forced out of its socket when I wiped out on my bike on the ice up in Canada. It took me a long time to recover. That was not fun at all. In the end, Jacob assumes this man was God. But, is this God with whom Jacob wrestles? When you come down to it, why would God wrestle with Jacob?
Maybe this story will help us think of the times we ourselves have wrestled with God. God calls out to us in our lives, but sometimes we resist or we rebel or we turn away. We think of our own needs and our own will, not God’s will. Sometimes we wrestle with ourselves, with our temptations, with those demons that call out to us in life.
I tell my parishioners that no matter who we are, we all have those demons in our lives with whom we battle. Jacob’s wresting match can remind us that we all can at one time or another wrestle with os many things in our lives: problems, irritations, temptations. May Lord help us in those things in which we struggle.
While thinking about this reading from Genesis, the suscipe prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola came to mind. Ignatius seemed to write this prayer in response to the struggles in his own life of faith:
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.
You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours;
do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.
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