I DON'T UNDERSTAND

Very often when someone comes to me to tell me about their suffering, about some awful thing that is happening in their life, they will say, “I don’t understand! Why would God allow this terrible thing?”

Aristotle begins one of his works with this simple statement: “All humans desire to

know.” And to me, this is exactly what gets us into trouble in our relationship with God. We want to know why God did or allowed a certain event in our lives. This is, of course, particularly troublesome when the event is a negative one. Why does God allow evil to exist in the world?

Usually that question is posed as an indirect challenge to God.  As Aristotle says, we all want to know. But, as we all have experienced, the so-called “problem of evil“ is completely unsolvable from our limited  human perspective. 

The Gospel reading for today (Sunday, September 20) presents the familiar parable about the workers in the vineyard, and that they were all paid the same wage at the end of the day, whether they had worked eight hours or only one. 

The first reading at mass prepares us to hear the parable. It’s the Lord speaking through Isaiah.  I’ve reprinted it herewith some words in bold type.:

Seek the LORD while he may be found, call him while he is near. Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked his thoughts; let him turn to the LORD for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts (Isaiah 55:6-9)

Now let’s return to my friend who is struggling to come to grips with some terribleevent in her life, and who complains  “I don’t understand! Why would God allow this terrible thing?” Will this passage from Isaiah be of any comfort to her? I doubt it. Her complaint, “I just don ‘t understand” is still sitting there.

We Christians, however, have a few ways of approaching the problem of evil. None of them provide “answers” or “solutions”, but rather they offer us a place to stand, a bit of perspective. At the center of the issue is the idea of “mystery.” The Lord is clear: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,”

I’m not God, and so shouldn't expect to grasp the mystery of God’s hidden plan. The virtue of Hope, however, is God’s gift that strengthens me to believe that God has a loving plan for the world, and that whatever things may look like to me, God's plan is working itself out in ways that I simply can’t comprehend with my limited intellect.

This won’t help my friend to “understand” anything, but it offers a place to stand, a perspective. In the end, then, I need to trust in the Lord’s goodness and wisdom and infinite Love. 

I wonder what that vineyard worker felt like as he walked away with his denarius after a full day’s work knowing that some of his fellow workers got their denarius for working only one hour. Maybe he mumbled “I just don’t understand!"

"My friend, I have done you  no wrong..."

WHERE WAS GOD ON SEPT. 11, 2001?

This past Friday, September 11, we made a good effort (somewhat successful, I think) to acquaint our 800 students with what "Nine-eleven" is all about. A colleague said to me in  a conversation that the way you can tell that this day is important is that twenty-five years later Americans over the age of thirty-five can tell you where they were on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. 

In this post, though, I'd like to ask not "Where were you?" but rather "Where was GOD on September 11, 2001?" Countless numbers of believers have asked themselves that question, sometimes in anger, sometimes in bewilderment. I'd like to offer the following essay by a monk, Aelred Graham, excerpted from his book, Zen Catholicism. Parts of it are a bit dense, but it may be of some help to you.

Among the factors that turn the existence of suffering into a "problem," even for religious people (perhaps especially for them), is a tendency to apply to God their own notions of good and evil, right and wrong. The expectation that the Almighty will conform to a moral pattern laid down for him in advance by his creatures still endures, despite the whole weight of biblical evidence to the contrary. The assumption that if one's conscience is clear God must be on one's side explains the self-righteousness that usually characterizes this or that "crusade" -- "we" being in the right, “they” hopelessly in the wrong — in which the participants are confident that they are fighting the battles of the Lord. 

A Christian truth which, often to our great detriment, we are for some reason reluctant to face is that God is implicated in created evil. Does disaster strike a city if the Lord has not sent it? I make the light and create darkness. I make weal and create woe. I, the Lord, do all these things. These texts from the inspired scriptures are to be explained in the light of a consistent theology, but they are not to be explained away. God has created a universe in which his positive action, the generation of things, implies a corresponding negative corruption or destruction. In order that human beings may live, part of the animal and vegetative world must die. Even moral evil, ť sin, falls within the divine plan. Though sin, being a defect in a creature's will, does not require God's causality, sin could not happen unless God permitted it. God, having created a race of frail human beings, takes account of the fact that large numbers of them will prove their frailty in action. God's universe contains the built-in realities of physical and moral evil. 

A commonly felt reluctance to face the fact that evil enters into God's scheme of things is due to a mental confusion. God is supremely good, we rightly say: therefore he can have no part in evil. But the conclusion does not follow. There is a distinction to be drawn between the ontological goodness, which is one of God's attributes, and moral goodness, which is based on conformity to an external norm. God is infinitely good because he lacks nothing of being, but his actions are not regulated by any norm other than his own inscrutable wisdom. God's holiness, which means "wholeness," includes all that is positive in moral goodness as we understand it; but what he sees as beneficial to the universe as a whole may involve evil to individuals. If we are to discover our true self, which is our being as harmonized with God, then we must learn to look upon areas of evil, not with approval, but calmly and dispassionately. What God tolerates we have no business to find intolerable. Or, to state the same point in more positive terms, we should seek to become increasingly identified with the attitude of your Father in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the evil and equally on the good, his rain to fall on the just and equally on the unjust. 

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GOD'S APOLOGY

You may notice that the question of suffering and the problem of evil have been favorite topics in this blog on and off for years. In the left hand column on this screen you can scroll down to "labels" that link you to posts about "God and Suffering," and "The mystery of Suffering." During the past few days it seems that I've been asked to share in the pain and suffering of a couple of friends and relatives. To be honest, it's been a heavy lift at times. Rereading the following passage was he help to me. So I'm sharing it with you.

A SURPRISING SIDE OF GOD

There is at this moment, in the back of some forsaken church, or even ordinary house, or at the turning of a deserted path, a poor man who joins his hands and from the depth of his misery, without very well knowing what he is saying, or without saying anything, thanks the good Lord for having made him free, for having made him capable of loving. 
There is somewhere else, I do not know where, a mother who hides her face for the last time in the hollow of a little breast which will beat no more, a mother next to her dead child who offers to God the groan of an exhausted resignation, as if the Voice which has thrown the suns into space as a hand throws grain, the Voice which makes the worlds tremble, had just murmured gently into her ear, “Pardon me. One day you will know, you will understand, you will thank me. But right now, what I am looking for from you is your pardon. Pardon.” 
These -- this harassed woman, this poor man -- are at the heart of the mystery, at the heart of universal creation and in the very secret of God. What can I say of it? Language is at the service of intelligence. And what these people have understood, they have understood by a faculty superior to intelligence although not in the least in contradiction with it -- or rather, by a profound and irresistible movement of the soul which engaged all the faculties at once, which engaged to the depth their entire nature… 
Yes, at the moment that this man, this woman, accepted their destiny, accepted themselves, humbly -- the mystery of creation was being accomplished in them.  While they were thus, without knowing it, running the entire risk of their human conduct, they were realizing themselves fully in the charity of Christ, becoming themselves, according to the words of St. Paul, other Christs. In short, they were saints.                                            - Charles Peguy (1873-1914)

This God who identifies with our suffering and apologizes because we cannot understand how it fits into the Divine Plan of Love for the world -- this sounds much more like the God that Jesus came to reveal to us. This is the God of Love, but also the God of Surprises and, unfortunately for us, the God of Mystery. I say let's accept the apology gracefully and keep on letting God love us in the midst of all the world's problems. And, of course, try to pass on that love to the people we are living with.
Maybe sometime I'll explore the idea of how our loving God uses adversity to strengthen us and help us grow in love for one another.
 Meanwhile, as we get closer to Holy Week, let us ask the Lord to help us to imitate his example on the cross by growing in self-giving love.

IS THERE A PLAN?

 

Every February 2 the Church celebrates the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, when Mary and  Joseph go to the temple in Jerusalem to offer the prescribed sacrifices required at the birth of a firstborn son. (Luke's account is the assigned gospel reading for the feast.) The incident is filled with symbolism and the fulfilment of prophecies. 

My meditation on the feast of the Presentation this year has been colored by recent tragic  events in the news in the U.S. and around the world. I invite you to reflect with me about whatver may e weighing you down today,

A central figure in the Presentation scene is an old man named Simeon who had been promised that he would live to see the Messiah. He took the infant in his arms and thanked God for fulfilling His promise. And he says to Mary,  

“Behold, this child is destined
for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be contradicted
--and you yourself a sword will pierce--
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

This is a literary device that Luke is fond of, called a "programmatic prophecy," in which the speaker foretells how the story is going to unfold. I was thinking about the idea of "programmatic prophecy" this morning. It is based on a couple of fundamental assumptions: God has a plan for the world, this plan is ultimately about God's infinite love for the world, and thirdly, that loving plan is unfolding all the time, despite what it may look like to us humans.

The other central figure in the scene of the Presentation is Mary. She's really important to my reflections this year. Here's why: Two of our teachers dying within two weeks of one another doesn't sound like much of a plan to me. But sometimes we're faced, as Mary was, with deep, painful mysteries (--and you yourself a sword will pierce--) that are way beyond our intellect's ability to sort out logically. The gospel tells us that Mary kept pondering these things in her heart. Notice, not in her head, but her heart. We mustn't let the mystery of evil draw us up onto some high level of abstraction, because the Plan is invisible to the intellect, it won't yield to logical analysis. Mary humanizes the issue for us, and invites us to follow her lead by reflecting in our hearts with quiet confidence that the Lord is constantly loving and supporting us. There's an ancient litany of the Virgin Mary that includes the petition: "Mary, who kept the faith on Holy Saturday, Pray for us."

We all know people who have been so overwhelmed by the absurdity of some tragic event that they simply stop believing that there is a plan at all. For some mysterious reason,  they do not yet have the gift of Faith (or, more technically, the virtue of Hope, which allows us to hold on to our confidence in God despite the horrors and evils of this world).

This week I've been saying to the Lord, "I'm sorry, Lord, but this sure doesn't look like much of a plan to me. Or if it is a plan, it seems like a cruel one." And Jesus, who knows our human frailty firsthand, agrees: "Yes. I know just what you mean! I don't blame you for feeling that way. But I promise to help you to hang in there despite how terrible things seem. Try repeating the words I spoke to my Heavenly Father in the garden of Gethsemane, 'Not my plan but yours be done!'" 

I'm asking the Virgin to intercede for me and for my brothers and sisters around the world, that her son, our Lord, will indeed stand by each of us, young and old, as we work our way together through the mystery of the Hidden Plan.

(But, to be honest, I confess that it still doesn't look like much of a plan to me right now.)

SANDALS AND MOSAICS

A close friend asked me to write a note to her sister, a firm believer who is fighting a losing battle with cancer, and has been wondering how we can be sure that God really is present in the midst of our sufferings. Since I've been praying hard for her for months, I felt that the Lord might offer me a few words of comfort to her. Here is what I wrote to my friend's sister a couple of days ago:.

=============================================

Dear_________________,

Here are a couple of thoughts that might be helpful to you right now.

If you look at the Book of Exodus chapter 3, the story of Moses and the burning bush, you will see in verse 5 that Moses is told. “Take off your sandals, for you are on holy ground!“ This is because he is in the presence of the Mystery of the Divine, namely, God. So he has to take his sandals off out of reverence for the mysterious presence that he will never be able to comprehend or understand. God is just too big for our intellects.

So when you or I are standing in the presence of some terrible suffering or some awful evil or some tragedy, the first thing we must do is take off our shoes! We are in the presence of a deep mystery that we cannot comprehend. That means that we cannot really “know” for sure if God is really here in the midst of all this suffering. All we have is the gift of faith.

Today is the feast day of Saint Augustine. He once wrote that our

life is like a beautiful mosaic. But the problem is that we only get to look at the mosaic from very close up. We see only one or two little pieces of the mosaic, and therefore it makes no sense to us. But when the Lord calls us home to heaven, we get to look at the entire mosaic. Then we can finally see that the whole picture is so unbelievably beautiful and full of love that it takes our breath away.

But the way things are in this life, we don’t get to see the whole thing.

Yet if you listen hard, you can hear the Lord apologizing to you. “I’m sorry. I wish you could see the whole picture right now, but in order for you to do that, you would have to be God. So, I’m sorry. I apologize. But for right now, please try to trust me. Look for all those bits of love that I reveal to you every day. That’s the best I can do.”

There. That’s at least my way of looking at things.

I hope this was of some help.

Love and prayers,

Fr. Albert

No Shoes, Please

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WILDERNESS AGAIN

I gave a day of Lenten Reflection yesterday using the following idea. I've used it before, but the response it received yesterdays way made me decide that it is worth revisiting.

Wilderness as a Metaphor 

We all know the story of how, after the tenth plague in Egypt, Pharaoh at last consented to let

the Israelites go into the wilderness to "offer a pilgrim-feast to the Lord." At that point Moses led them on a daring dash for freedom, through the Red Sea and out into the wilderness in what appeared to be a charge into the open jaws of death. In this wilderness there was little water and no food, only hostile tribes and poisonous snakes. 

Midbar

"Wilderness" translates the Hebrew word, midbar, which is sometimes incorrectly translated as "desert."My Hebrew dictionary says that midbar means "tracts of land used for pasturing flocks and herds; uninhabited land." The word conveys the sense of a land that is still wide open space, un-surveyed, unmapped, undomesticated by humans. The wilderness is land that is still relatively free of human control. In Exodus theology the wilderness represented divine presence, lack of human control -- and freedom. 

In sharp contrast to the wilderness stood Egypt, which was very much under human control. In fact, the Egypt of the Pharaohs was famous for its order and neatness. So Egypt represented human rationality, human order -- and slavery. Thus in Israel's tradition the wilderness came to symbolize the unpredictable and unfathomable side of life, the mystery of God. This contrast between Egypt and the wilderness is crucial to a Christian view of troubled times. 

The Wilderness as "God's Country" 

We can use the word "wilderness" to refer to any and all of those difficult times we ourselves

experience, as well as the times when we are experiencing the pain of others second-hand as I have been this past week. To live in the wilderness means living in mystery, where things are beyond my understanding and my control; it is to live in "God's Country." 

There is another important dimension to the wilderness symbolism. In Hebrew thought, history is experienced as linear, not cyclical: it starts with creation and moves relentlessly toward its fulfillment. 

We individuals are born into that flow and are called to shape it by our decisions. We are moving onward with the flow of time toward the future. God gives us the future and we accept it from his hand. When Israel was called out of Egypt, she was also called out of the past and asked to move joyfully and trustingly into God's future. The wilderness, then, was not only a symbol of divine mystery but also a symbol of the future. Each of us is called, like the Israelites, into an unknown future; but if we don't know God's goodness or trust in God's love, we experience the future as a threat. On the other hand, if we trust in God's goodness and love, then the future is transformed from a threat into a promise. The wilderness as the unknown future is in a special sense God's preserve, it is par excellence "God's Country." 

So, if I had to say a word of comfort to any of the people I’ve been praying for, I’d probably say something like this: 

"I see that right now events in your life are completely beyond your control, and the future is unknown and terrifying; you are in the land of darkest mystery. Well, take off your shoes, because you are on holy ground. Welcome to the wilderness -- welcome to God's country! This is where the Lord is expecting to meet you and love you and deliver you." 

Let’s all pray for our brothers and sisters who find themselves victims of every mysterious kind of tragedy around the world, and any people who are right now wandering in a land of fearful mystery. May they experience the reassurance that comes from realizing that the trackless wasteland in which they find themselves is indeed God’s mysterious country, and that God fully intends to meet them there – and probably already has. 

Not Yet!

My hour has not yet come

In the last sentence of this past Friday’s gospel passage, St. John tells us that the crowd in Jerusalem could not attack Jesus “because His hour had not yet come.”

He uses that phrase a couple of times in his gospel. First, we remember the scene at Cana when his mother asks him to solve the problem of the wine running out, and he explains “my hour has not yet come.”

Then, in verses skipped in the editing of Friday’s passage, from John Chapter 7, when “his brothers” encourage him to go up to Jerusalem, he replies “my time is not yet here;” and in the following verse he explains to them “I am not going up to this feast, because my time has not yet been fulfilled.” 

And then the verse in Friday’s gospel, “no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.”

In each of these passages, the same word shows up in the original Greek: oupo, a very common adverb meaning: “not yet.” 

As ordinary as the word  oupo, “not yet” may be, it is crucially important in all the passages we just heard: To say that the hour has NOT YET arrived indicates that eventually the hour WILL arrive.

It implies that Jesus' life is following the plan, but as of yet not all the stages of that plan have occurred. But they will. Christ’s earthly life is following a trajectory, heading in a single direction: it has significance, it has meaning.

And if that’s the case, then we who have Christ living in us and who are living in Christ, we are also living out that plan, following that same trajectory. This is especially important for you and me to remember when things are going badly. In times of pain and hopelessness we can hold onto that little word  oupo , “not yet,” that assures us that no matter what things may look like, our lives are heading in a certain meaningful direction, and therefore, everything in our lives has meaning, even and especially the seemingly bad parts.

Father, the hour has come

At the last supper, Jesus says, “Father, the hour has come, glorify, your son.” It is in his suffering and death that he finally reaches the hour, his goal: the Glory of the father. And we who have suffered with him will one day be glorified with him as well.

Each year during Holy Week and Easter, we celebrate the “hour,”  we remind ourselves how the story turns out:  Christ’s passion and death are oupo, not yet the end of the story. We know that the Easter mystery does not end on Good Friday: we live in the assurance that Sunday is coming.

The idea of oupo, “not yet” disappears early on Easter morning, when Christ is finally raised to a new life, and then in the ascension is brought to the fullness of glory at his Father's right hand. 

And we who are still suffering here in this vale of tears are on our way to join him there. It's just that our own hour of glory has not yet come. 

A final thought: Lots of times when when it seems that "God didn't answer your prayer," the Lord did in fact give an answer to your request -- the answer was oupo. 

Oupo -- Not yet!

THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE

Today, July 27, is the feast of Mary Magdalene, who certainly is a good patron saint for people who have to deal with tragedy in their life. I think itś appropriate, then, to share some of my recent reading from Richard Rohr in Falling Upward. Here are his thoughts on the Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno. I have broken the passage into shorter paragraphs. 

The exact phrase “the tragic sense of life“ was first popularized in the early 20th century by the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, who courageously told his European world that they had distorted the meaning of faith by aligning it with the western philosophy of “progress“ rather than with what he saw as rather evident in the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Jesus and the Jewish prophets were fully at home with the tragic sense of life, and it made the shape and nature of reality very different for them, for Unamuno, and maybe still for us. 

By this clear and honest phrase, I understand Unamuno to mean that life is not, nor ever has been, a straight line forward. According to him, life is characterized much more by exception and disorder, than by total or perfect order. Life, as the biblical tradition makes clear, is both loss and renewal, death and resurrection, chaos, and healing at the same time; life seems to be a coalition of opposites.

Unamuno equates the notion of faith with trust in an underlying life force so strong that it even includes death. Faith also includes reason, but is a larger category than reason for Unamuno. Truth is not always about pragmatic problem-solving and making things “work,“ but about reconciling contradictions. Just because something might have some dire effects does not mean it is not true, or even good. Just because something pleases people does not make it true either.

Life is inherently, tragic, and that is the truth, that only faith, but not our seeming logic, can accept. This is my amateur and very partial summary of the thought of this great Spanish philosopher. (Falling Upward, 54)

We Christians, are, of course, supposed to be well aware of how this tragic sense of life becomes real in the Easter Mystery; but we can use a lot of help when it comes to accepting it without understanding it.

Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for us!

HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN

The past two weekends have been so full that I've had to neglect my blog. My apologies to those who enjoy reading my weekly posts. I would like to present to you at post from a couple of years ago, trusting that it will still hjave some relevance. 

This year our Archbishop has once again transferred the celebration of the Ascension of the Lord from Thursday to the following Sunday, May 24. The message of the feast, however, remains the same. The liturgy of the paschal season has been leading us toward this feast for weeks, and reflecting on the meaning of the mystery of the Ascension can be a help to all of us during these pandemic days.  

In  the naïve worldview of ancient Israel, where the earth was as flat as a dinner plate and the firmament was above and the netherworld below, the idea of Jesus’ “ascending” up into a cloud was easily accepted. Too easily, perhaps, because it would then seem to mean that Jesus, taken “up” into heaven, had gone away from us and was thus no longer present.

Fortunately our modern astronomy won’t allow us to settle for this simple picture of Jesus rising “upward” to heaven. And that’s great, because we’re not as likely to misinterpret it as meaning “Jesus left us.” We are forced to look for the meaning of the event rather than simply settling for “Jesus went up into the clouds of heaven.” And it is precisely this theological meaning that can be a comfort to us during these sad and uncertain times of pandemic.

The feast of the Ascension celebrates Jesus’ passing beyond the familiar dimensions of time and space, beyond the reach of our senses and into the presence of the Father. So what? Well, think about it: This means that Jesus is no longer bound by time and space, so he is now more present to us than he ever was previous to the Ascension. He is in our hearts and bodies, in our friends and our foes, in the spring breeze and, mysteriously, in the strands of DNA inside the novel coronavirus.

Now, we may be repelled by the idea that God could somehow be present in a terrible, deadly virus and all of the suffering it has caused, but that’s far more comforting than the alternate view – that God is totally absent from those tragic events and horrible microorganisms, and that we are left to face these horrors on our own. A God who’s only present to us when times are good is not much of a God.

So as we continue to struggle with the depressing statistics, the deaths of family members or friends, the dark uncertainties of unemployment and closed classrooms, let's remember the lesson of the Ascension: Christ is intimately present with each of us in the midst of this whole mess, and is walking every step with us through this valley of the shadow of death.

 "Though I walk in the valley of darkness

I fear no evil, for you are at my side. (Psalm 23:4)" 

A GOOD QUESTION

The Israelites´ Question

Last Sunday´s first reading, from the book of Exodus, ended with a question that has stayed with me all

The Israelites complained to Moses

week. You may remember that in that passage the Israelites were complaining about being pulled out of Egypt into the inhospitable wilderness. The final sentence reads: “The place was called Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the Lord, saying, is the Lord, in our midst or not?”

For the Israelites, the question was never “Is there a God?“ Or “Does God exist?“ For them the question was always “Is God here with us right at this moment.“  So now in Exodus Chapter 17 we hear the Israelites posing their question: "Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

My Question, Too?

This week I’ve been wondering if I´m so very different from the Israelites. Sometimes in some difficult situations it seems that God is terribly distant. Just when I need his loving presence most, the Lord seems nowhere to be found. Now of course I believe that God exists. That’s not the question. The question echoes one that occurs in the psalms:“Where is our God” “Does he march with our armies no longer?”

Our great mystical writers talk about experiencing “the dark night of the soul.” I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten that deep into the darkness, but there certainly have been times when I have begun to ask the Israelites´ question…

I see that I wrote a little prayer in my journal last Sunday evening: “Lord, please give me the eyes to see you at my side, and strengthen my faith to feel your loving help.”

This fits in with one of my Lenten resolutions, namely, to try to make it easier for others to believe in God. How often do I help a brother or a sister feel the Lord´s loving presence in his or her life?

Come to think of it, I can name quite a few people who do that for me. So now it’s just a matter of passing it on.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

 

ASK THE COMPUTER

In the mid-1970's I learned a computer language called "Basic," and under the tutelage of Fr. Mark, a brother monk, I learned to program our computer to do all sorts of handy things for me in my work at school. I loved the thrill of getting the computer to follow my directions and, say, make a list of all the students who had signed up for Geometry but had received an F on Algebra I the previous semester. 

It was even more fun, in a weird sort of way, it the program didn't work at first. Say I type "Run" and the computer screen fills up with a single student's name appearing over and over. Uh-oh! Now what? I type "Break." The first step is to ask the computer what's going on. I ask it to tell me the value of each of the variables I've assigned at the top of the program. Let's say I ask for the current value of the variable SN$(%), that increases by 1 each time a name is printed.  Whoa! The value of SN$(%), which should be over 50 by now, is still at 0! That's the explanation of the weird output. (I love explanations, don't you?) So then I go into my program and make the necessary change, and type "Run" again and see how much further I get toward producing the list. Asking the computer makes perfect sense because I know that the answer, the logical explanation, is there somewhere -- I just need to ask the right question.

"REASON" TAKES OVER

In the 1700's in Europe, the rationalists saw that everything in the world seemed to obey the laws of the sciences that were being developed at the time. They decided that the universe was a vast mechanical system governed by the laws of the physical sciences. Having applied the laws of evidence, cause and effect and so on in the physical world with such astounding success, they couldn't stop themselves, and began applying these laws to everything, even things that lay outside of their neat time-space box. They concluded that if something couldn't be measured scientifically then it simply didn't exist. They just decided this, of course, with (paradoxically) no evidence for their claim. So, out the window went ultimate meaning in life, God, existence beyond the grave, and all such non-scientific religious concepts.

THE GOD OF EXPLANATION

Up until that time people had believed in a transcendent God -- the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for example. The Judeo-Christian God was involved with His people, and loved them, while they in return could praise, thank, glorify and even complain loudly to their God. But now suddenly the rationalist worldview swept over the Western World, and the God of Abraham was replaced by "the god of explanation." You and I sometimes fall into this mistake, too: We ask God to explain himself to us, to justify why a certain tragic thing has happened. "If you are all loving and infinitely kind and just, then why was this baby born with this awful disease? Explain yourself!" We think it's like asking the computer until you get the rational solution to the question. And naturally we get frustrated, angry and feel betrayed when no explanation is forthcoming.

WANTING IT BOTH WAYS

Why do we people of faith sometimes get angry at God for not offering us explanations for the existence of evil in the world? Well, we seem to want two mutually contradictory things at the same time: We want a God who operates in a rational, logical manner (like my computer program), a God that we can comprehend -- a God like us, whom we can therefore predict and even control. But at the same time we want a God who is infinitely loving and forgiving, and whose power and wisdom lie way beyond the limits of our puny human understanding.

The God of Faith permeates the world God created, with its incredible beauty and elegance. But this same God invites us into a relationship of intimacy that involves vulnerability, s[spontaneity and trust. inviting you and me to rely on the virtue of hope in the face of the more mysterious parts of the Divine Plan. The God of Faith does not, indeed can not offer us explanations for the most important things in our lives. That's why the God of Faith apologizes to us (see last week's post): God created us to be curious problem-solvers, but then came up with a Plan for the world that is beyond our ability to comprehend. What a bummer! 

But also, what an opportunity for a relationship of intimacy and trust between ourselves and God!  

 

LEAVE A MESSAGE, I'LL GET BACK TO YOU

Three Tries But No Answer 

I ended last week's post about prayer with the thought that I might look at the problem of "unanswered prayer" this week. And now, conveniently enough, we find the following passage assigned as part of the Second Reading at mass for Sunday, July 4:

Brothers and sisters:That I, Paul, might not become too elated,

because of the abundance of the revelations,

a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan,

to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. 

Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me,

but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,

for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 4:7f)

Paul has just finished describing a mystical vision which had lifted him to the heights of heaven and let him see secrets that he can't even put into words. Then comes the above passage in which he explains that God wanted to prevent him from getting too puffed up over that experience. We don't know exactly what he's referring to by his "thorn in the flesh;" but it's some sort of suffering, whether physical, spiritual, or psychological. One scholar suggests that it may have been a particular person who opposed Paul at every turn and made his preaching ministry very difficult. 

In any case, Paul grows weary of being "beaten up" by this affliction, and prays intensely on three occasions to be delivered from it. But in vain. Some might say that God doesn't answer his prayer, but this isn't the way Paul himself sees it. God does answer his prayer, telling him: “My grace is sufficient for you." Paul's own preferred plan is that he be freed from this affliction, but God offers a different plan in which Paul will be strengthened by his suffering, "for power is made perfect in weakness.” God doesn't just tell him "Find a way to deal with it!" but assures him that God's loving presence will be with him through every trial, and will be enough to get him through. 

Stretching Exercises

St. Augustine suggests that when God doesn't answer our prayer immediately it's because the waiting in faith increases our desire and "expands" our hearts. I remember reading this in his "Letter to Proba" and having to look up his Latin word capacius. It turns out to be the comparative form of the adjective capax, which means something like "of sufficient size, roomy." Ever since then, when I'm in the midst of some bout of unanswered prayer I picture my heart being stretched, made capacius, by my constant earnest asking. Why does God need my heart to be made "roomier?" There's the mystery: I've no idea. But I do know this much: that the Lord's grace is sufficient to get me through the situation, and that whatever the mysterious plan is, it has to do with Love, with making me less selfish and more able to welcome others into my now roomier heart.

The Vending Machine Problem

One key to dealing satisfactorily with the question of unanswered prayer is the notion that we are created for a relationship of personal intimacy with God. God wants to have a relationship of love with each of us, but such a relationship involves risk-taking: leaving myself vulnerable, letting the other know all about me, leaving the other person free to respond in love in whatever way they wish, being open to surprises and to disappointments. That's what "intimacy" involves.

A telling contrast is the example of a vending machine. I insert my dollar bill with complete confidence that the machine is going to deliver exactly what I asked for, right away. This is a mechanical operation performed by a machine. There's no question of conscious response to a request -- the machine is engineered to "react" to specific commands. So of course I get outraged if the machine gobbles up my dollar but then just sits there mutely without reacting. I fume: "Where's my bag of chips!"

So, now. think about your relationship with God. Do you ever think of God as a vending machine that is supposed to react the way you want because you've inserted some required amount of prayers or masses or good deeds? Or is your God a Person who is free to respond to you in the most loving possible way, even if that way is beyond your ability to understand?

Disappointed 
Customer

When the vending machine doesn't deliver, people get upset and may even start rocking the machine or kicking it. When their Vending-Machine-God doesn't deliver, people get upset and feel betrayed, even crushed by their disappoint- ment. God didn't deliver.

The Mystery Remains 

Because God did not create us as automatons but as free persons designed for intimacy with our loving Creator, unanswered prayer will always be a possibility, a mystery we have to live with. 

But at least now it sounds like a plan. Or should I say a Plan?