Several years ago an old school friend of mine asked me if I would officiate at his wedding. I said I’d be happy to. We were in school together through high-school, although we hadn’t been in touch for some years. We made our first Holy Communion together. The only memory I have of my First Communion is that I got a new suit and we both pretended we were detectives from Hawaii 5-0. ‘Book him Danno. Murder one.’ I didn’t know what that meant either, but I said it anyway. He became a doctor and pathologist. They are the doctors who perform autopsies.
Before we got to the wedding, which was going to have mass, I asked him if he would be receiving Holy Communion. Although he was brought up Catholic like me, I didn’t know if he still was practicing. He said he would like to receive, but he added, ‘I have to tell you that as a scientist, I don’t believe in the resurrection.’ He wasn’t trying to be rude, in fact quite the opposite and I admired him for his honesty. If you think of the work he did, studying dead bodies every other day, you can imagine what a leap of faith it would be for him to believe that any of those dead bodies could come back to life.
Knowledge and learning are great gifts, but they can become obstacles too, when it comes to faith. The more we learn, the more we get a sense that everything can be explained. It’s just a matter of time. But questions of faith are completely different.
‘I bless you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children.’
I have been blessed to study theology for many years, but that doesn’t mean I will have more faith because of what I have learnt. Sometimes the opposite can happen. Faith requires a certain humility. I have been blessed to learn much, but there is so much that is completely beyond my understanding. That was one area where the religious professionals at the time of Jesus were getting stuck. They felt they had the knowledge and therefore things must go as they understood. As a result they failed to recognize that Jesus was the Messiah they had been waiting for, for centuries. If they had been more humble and open minded, they probably would have recognized it. But they had a set picture of how the Messiah must be and because Jesus didn’t fit into their understanding, therefore it couldn’t be him.
I am always amazed at how dismissive people can be of religion, offering science as ‘proof’ that religion cannot be real. The truth is that there are incredible miracles all around us and continue to happen all the time. And I’m not talking about the miracle of a new born child, but miracles that are super-natural (above nature), which cannot be explained by science. Just take the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which appeared on the apron of Juan Diego in Mexico in 1531. Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego outside Mexico city and told him to go to the bishop and request that a church be built there in her honor. He went to the bishop, but the bishop needed proof. After a second apparition, Our Lady told him to come again to the same place and she would give him a sign. When he returned he found lots of roses in full bloom, even though it was the middle of winter. He collected the roses in his tilma (apron) and brought them to the bishop. But when he was allowed to see the bishop and emptied out the roses on the floor, he didn’t know that the image of Mary had been imprinted on his apron. When they saw this the bishop and others with him believed. But the miracle wasn’t just that there was an image on his apron. The image itself is a living miracle. It has been studied by science and they don’t know what it is made from. It is not made from any earthly elements. Also the image is a codex, which the local people of the time would have been able to ‘read’. In other words, everything on the image would have explained something to the local people. That image itself is worth reading about.
Science doesn’t contradict religion, it simply comes from different angle. It asks different questions. Science asks what something is made of and how did it come about. Religion asks what does it mean and what is God saying to us through different signs.
There is a movie called Nefarious, which came out in April, which I would highly recommend. It is about a man on death row, who is possessed, although no one believes he is possessed. They just think he is very intelligent and manipulative. He has to be assessed by a psychiatrist, so that it can be shown that he is sane enough to be executed. The movie is basically a dialogue between the prisoner and the psychiatrist interviewing him. The inmate explains to the psychiatrist that he is a demon, possessing this man’s body. The psychiatrist says that there is no such thing as demons. But as the interview progresses and the demon starts to reveal more and more things to the psychiatrist, he gradually begins to think differently.
The demon shows the psychiatrist how he is blinded by his own arrogance. He believes that demons can’t be real, etc. But the demon shows him that it is because of his arrogance and our arrogance, that Satan has managed to deceive the human race so much. The psychiatrist starts to brag about how liberated humanity now is: people can choose their gender; they can marry whomever they wish; women are liberated by abortion. But the demon shows him how all of these things are a deception, because all of them go against the divine law. By ignoring God’s law, God’s Commandments, we have allowed ourselves to be completely deceived and convinced that what is evil is actually what is good for us. Again, it comes down to human arrogance. If we were more humble and accepting of God’s teachings, there wouldn’t be so much evil in the world. But because we think we know better, Satan has managed to deceive us.
I am often amazed and in awe at people I meet who have little education and yet have some profound insights into our faith. That is because they are humble enough and open enough that God can more easily speak to their heart. Intelligence and knowledge are great things, but they are not essential for growing in faith. What is essential is openness to what God wants to show us and the humility to recognize that no matter how much we know and learn, the ways of God are completely beyond us. But just because we cannot understand them, doesn’t mean they cannot be.
Instead of saying, ‘That doesn’t make any sense to me, therefore it cannot be,’ it might be better to say, ‘That is completely beyond my understanding, but I believe because it is what the Lord has said.’
‘I bless you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children.’
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