15th Sunday Year A - Homily 6

Homily 6 - 2020

“ … Then the disciples went up to him and asked, ‘Why do you talk to them in parables?’” Go home and, if you have a copy of Matthew’s Gospel, read what follows. Jesus’ answer seems even more confusing. What was Jesus up to?

A retired teacher I know had a great way with children. She would read a passage from the Gospel, and then ask the class to think quietly and, and after a little while, to respond by finishing a sentence starting with “I wonder …”. She would listen to their responses — and not comment on what they said. She wanted them to keep wondering. The great pioneering scientists were people who wondered, who were not satisfied with the answers accepted among their peers.

The story is told of the young St Thomas Aquinas, the most famous of the Church’s theologians, constantly asking, as a lad, the question, “Who is God?” Another story is told of the young St Teresa of Avila, one of the Church’s most gifted mystics, wandering away from her home as a little girl. When at last found by an anxious father and asked where did she think she was going, her answer was, “I want to see God”.

A friend of mine, a former priest, tells me he has lost his faith. He can no longer hold together the idea of an infinitely good God and the reality of the suffering and death of an innocent child. He challenged me. Do I have an answer, a satisfying answer? Not a satisfying one. Yet. I know God too well to disbelieve. But I don’t have a clearly satisfying, definitive answer, to the suffering of an innocent child — I simply keep wondering.

Over the years my sense of God has grown and deepened noticeably through wondering. I have discovered there is an enormous difference between wondering and doubting — though they can seem at times to be the same thing.

This brings us back to the disciples’ question: “Why do you talk to them in parables?” I wonder …