Of Course!
August 23, 2023
Fr. John Riccardo
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!
“For who has known the mind of the Lord; who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given him anything that he may be repaid?”
For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33-36)
I received a message from someone very close to me not too long ago. He’s going through a very rough time, battling all sorts of pain, both emotional and physical. In fact, he’s been battling this pain for decades, with only occasional days of relief. Most of his life has been a veritable desert. At the end of the message, he simply asked, “Why is God doing this to me?”
I think most of us can relate to that sentiment, if we‘re honest. Many of us have said something similar, I imagine, either to another person or directly to God.
Years ago, C.S. Lewis published a collection of essays entitled God in the Dock. I remember first coming across it and being profoundly struck by the title. “In the dock” is an expression that means “on trial.” God – the God who is Love, who fashioned all that is freely and out of His love – is, over and over again, put “on trial” by His creatures. We can so often and so easily presume that we know better than Him. If God were only a bit more like us, as wise as us, as kind as us, as loving as us, things would be different.
Of course, even to write those words feels downright blasphemous.
And it’s absurd.
In these final verses of Chapters 9-11 in his letter to the Church in Rome, Paul breaks out into an eruption of praise and exaltation. He started this section by talking about how blessed the people of Israel are (not were) in having been chosen by God and given so many gifts that were not given to any other nation. He then moved on to the downright puzzling reality that when all of God’s promises were (unexpectedly) fulfilled in the person of Jesus, many of the Jewish people did not accept Him. He then wrestled with how this is all going to play out in the end, how God is going to put everything right. After going on for some time, he now comes to the crescendo, and it’s simply a crescendo of awestruck praise and wonder.
The simple reality, Paul writes, is that God’s ways are not our ways. Our puny, finite minds simply cannot understand what He is about, the plan He has, and how it is all going to be fulfilled. He is God and we are dust and ashes. Or, as God said to St. Catherine of Siena, “I am He who is; you are she who is not.” God’s ways, in the end, are simply beyond us.
Though Paul isn’t writing about suffering per se in this passage, I find myself thinking about my friend I mentioned at the start, and the many people I’m praying for daily who are suffering, as I pray with this passage.
I heard another friend of mine once say, “I wonder if when we all enter into the Kingdom, and see how God has brought everything to a glorious conclusion, a conclusion so infinitely beyond our capacity to even imagine at this moment, we don’t just look at each with awe and wonder, and say, ‘Of course!’”
God knows what He is doing. This is true for the people of Israel, my friend above, your marriage, your grandchildren, your children, our nation, and the Church in these days in which we live. He is not anxious. He is not nervous. In the midst of whatever is causing us doubts, worry, anxiety, fear, confusion, and especially any temptation to put God “in the dock,” let us break forth like Paul in praise of our good Father.