Homily: July 8, 2025, Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time (Wrestling Angel)

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 “When the man saw that he could not prevail over him, he struck Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that the hip socket was wrenched as they wrestled.” 

Jacob was quite a character, wrestling with the angel of God all through the night. Surprisingly, the angel ‘could not prevail over him’. Jacob must have been stubborn and strong to be able to persist in the battle against the divine.

But this incident is not just about physical or mental wrestling, it is symbolic of the inner struggles of life, the restlessness of the soul.

We all wrestle with something: our past, our present, our fears, our desires, our boundaries, our free will. Like Jacob, we fight, sometimes with others, sometimes with ourselves, sometimes with God.

And God welcomes us to fight it out with Him. He knows we need it.

Now why did the angel wait till the morning to strike Jacob’s hip? He could have done it at the beginning and ended the fight quickly. But God allowed Jacob to wrestle all night, until dawn. Perhaps Jacob needed to expend all his energies, to vent out all his anxieties, before he would be ready to accept God’s plan for him.

The lesson is profound: that God often allows us to wrestle with Him until we come to a place of surrender, to challenge and fight His will until we are willing to submit and obey.

Jacob, and other characters in the Bible are mirrors of ourselves. Their life stories help us see our life stories better.

Jacob stole Esau’s birthright, and though he received the blessing, he had been hiding and restless all his life. Now he had to face Esau again. Clearly, he was fearful and anxious. His inner struggles found full expression through his long wrestling with the angel. After the fight, he was physically tired but mentally ready to face the brother whom he betrayed.

We too, often expect the Lord to make right all the wrongs we committed, to reverse the mistakes we made, knowing we are to be responsible for our own doing, but we choose to blame God for not answering our unreasonable prayers.

And like Jacob, God allows us to wrestle with Him, long enough to satisfy our stubbornness, then He would gently strike a blow painful enough to humble us yet firm enough to empower us to face our biggest fears.

At the end of our fight, may we learn to surrender: “Lord, do with my life as You will, not my will, but Yours be done.”

Amen.


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