Wrestle with God: Homily for Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Are we called to wrestle with God? In today’s first reading, Jacob finds himself wrestling with an unknown man. His name change to Israel tells us a lot about a Jewish understanding of God. Readings for Today.

Table of Contents

Wrestle with God

And so this first reading from the book of Genesis about Jacob is something that is foundational in many respects for the Jewish people. The book of Genesis is a lot about establishing foundations. What does this mean? What does that mean? And there are always multiple layers to the stories that we encounter in the book of Genesis.

In the story of the fall for example, one layer could be why are human beings afraid of snakes. Because of the role that the serpent plays in tempting Adam and Eve. In this story though we get something about the self-identity of the Jewish people. Jacob wrestles with an unknown man that he ultimately recognizes as a man of God, perhaps an angel, and he doesn’t win but he doesn’t lose. He contends with the man.

This is something about the self-identity of Israel because the word really means one who contends with God or in some translations one who wrestles with God. But that is at the root of what it means for the people of Israel to see their relationship with God. And if we look at the scriptures we learn something very important not only about the Jewish people but about our God, that he doesn’t mind that we wrestle with him.

Think of so many passages in the Old Testament where there are serious questions being asked of God. The Psalms we pray in the liturgy of the hours are often about a struggle to figure out what this means. I think in particular of the Psalm where the question is raised, “Why doesn’t God do something about evil?” The psalmist thinks about this and struggles with this and then has the insight, “If I think like this I should abandon the faith of my people.”

Think of our own lives. It’s not the case that it’s easy for us to understand many of the things of God. They’re beyond us. But that is not to say that we should not really wrestle with the content, with the idea of what is being proposed by God or our experience of God.

Now it has been said that there’s no such thing as a stupid question and I used to say that to students too. But the problem is there is such a thing as a stupid question. A question that’s asked about something that you’ve gone over in great detail that the question is really about, “But what is that?” And it’s like what we’ve just spent the last 15 minutes discussing it. Maybe that’s not such a bright question.

But in a way God welcomes questions. Think of the encounter between Moses and God speaking from the burning bush. Moses asks all kinds of questions. He says, “How can you send me?” I’m a poor speaker.” “How can you send me? I don’t know your name.” And so forth. Finally God gets tired of the questions and says, “Just go.” And Moses we know does.

What is it in our own life that sometimes we wonder about in terms of our faith? What is it in our life that we really wrestle in some ways with an understanding or a teaching or a belief? These questions are good things. Think of our brother St. Thomas Aquinas who asked a lot of questions. His Summa is nothing but a series of one question after another. It is a good thing because when we wrestle with God we come to understand more fully for us what it means to believe in God. And we understand even just a tiny bit more who our God is. And so today don’t be afraid to wrestle with God.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update. You can subscribe to our podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.