It is said that in North America every fourth generation of monarch butterflies migrates to ancestral breeding grounds in Mexico from as far away as Canada. Many millions travel more than
3,000km to a place they have never been and experts don’t understand how this happens. It is just another mystery beyond our understanding and all we can do is admire and wonder.
Coming to terms with great mysteries is a component of faith. St Paul reminds us in one of tomorrow’s readings that “we walk by faith, not by sight”, which suggests the Christian life is full of surprises and things we don’t understand.
The gospels tells us Jesus did not speak to his disciples “except in parables”. Someone has described them as miniature time bombs which, when they go off, change the way we see things. That is consistent with the intention of Jesus, who sought to enrich our understanding of God and his relationship with us.
The parable of the mustard seed growing secretly does not at first seem very radical but it implies that God’s important work is often done secretly and by obscure people.
Last year a disabled man, Alan Barnes (67), was badly beaten up outside his home in Gateshead in England. Barnes, who has suffered from height and growth defects from birth, sustained a broken collarbone in the attack and was afraid to return to his home. A woman, Katie Cutler, was so upset by the incident that she launched an appeal in the hope of raising £500 towards renting new accommodation for him.
Her campaign took on a life of its own, attracting donations from all over Europe totalling £330,000, which bought the pensioner a new home. We don’t know if either of them is religious or if formal religion came into it at all but does it really matter? The sign of the cross was certainly there in the self-giving compassion and concern of that previously unknown young woman who was surprised beyond words by the response.
The theme of surprise is continued in the epistle reading where St Paul underlines the power of Jesus Christ to change lives in a dramatic and radical way and always for the better. Change is at the very heart of Christian discipleship, as Paul discovered on the road to Damascus.
More surprise in the Old Testament reading which tells how the prophet Samuel was sent to anoint a future national leader for the people. He rejects all the older sons of Jesse in favour of David, the youngest, who had been excluded from the original shortlist as he was not considered a runner. Too young, they said. The God of the unexpected indicated otherwise.
The result of the recent referendum on marriage surprised many and has led to negative comments by some churchmen. However, the careful comment of Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin about the Catholic Church needing to face a reality check was wise and leaves room for reflection.
Such reflection might usefully consider these words from Fr Gerard Hughes's book The God of Surprises: "Our notion of God is mediated to us through parents, teachers and clergy. We do not come to know God directly. If our experience of parents and teachers has been of dominating people who show little affection or respect for us as persons, but value us only in so far as we conform to their expectations, then this experience is bound to affect our notion of God . . .
“To become aware that we have a distorted notion of God is to have made progress on our journey towards him. As the journey continues, we shall discover other distortions of which we were not aware. Such discoveries can be painful at first but it is like the pain we feel when our limbs are at last free from being constricted; it is the pain of freedom. The journey to God is a journey of discovery and it is full of surprises.”