Twentyfirst Sunday Ordinary

Twenty-first Sunday Ordinary
August 21, 2005

"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" (Romans 11:33-36). "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father." (Matthew 16:13-20)

This week's readings focus our attention on the gulf between God's world and our own, and therefore on the nature of faith. St. Paul has a vision of this disparity which only Christ could span for us. Peter professes his confidence and devotion to Jesus. Jesus chooses him to lead his little band of disciples In spite of his many weaknesses and failures of judgment. Jesus acknowledges that the kind of trust which Peter places in him could only come from God.

We believers are often fearful that someone or something will threaten our confidence in God's rightful place in creation. We want to know for certain, once and for all, how things are in God's mind. St. Paul's reflection on the unknowable ways of God is reminiscent of the latest controversies about science and faith. How do we retain our awe of divine power and wisdom and at the same time acknowledge the truth about the cosmos as we know it from observation? After many centuries of suspicion and persecution of scientists, Catholic teaching for the past hundred years has realized that science and faith are complementary rather than oppositional. The Bible is the revelation of God's presence in the world and our lives, often expressed in beautifully poetic ways. To see it as a scientific textbook is to obscure its unique truths about the mind of God.

From the perspective of faith there is no doubt about God's creation of the cosmos and continuing care for every molecule in it. There are many questions about how the cosmos works, about how God did it, not answered in the biblical texts. Science can certainly shed light on "the mind of God" in this sense. Human beings have a right to investigate and develop theories which help us to do this. The view of the world from this scientific perspective will probably always be changing and fluid, a reflection of the limitations of the human mind. We do not "believe in" any scientific theory in the same way that we express our trust in God's presence in creation. Understanding the unimaginable complexity, size and age of creation as revealed by these observations should increase our faith rather than threaten it. The presence of the Most High is revealed in every detail of creation.