Tuesday of Holy Week
“Though I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength, yet my reward is with the LORD, my recompense is with my God.” We hear these words in today’s first Reading. We all have experiences of “toiling in vain” – those times when we put forward all of our effort and have nothing to show for it. It’s so tempting in those times to assume that our failures and sufferings are all for nothing.
But are they really for nothing? Or do we instead believe that our “reward is with the Lord”? It’s so difficult to trust the latter, and yet the Scriptures proclaim it. We have a God who sees all of our struggles; we have a God who will reward every labor and wipe away every tear, even if in this life it all seems in vain. This is not an easy teaching to trust, especially in the midst of our toils – it’s a tremendous act of faith to trust that God will reward us in the end. But if we really believe in God’s love and strength, then we must also believe that He will reward us all with more than enough in the world to come. Let us pray for the grace to trust in that divine recompense today.