Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

 We Know Something About God, But Not Everything

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara

Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, August 23, 2026

In my other sermons, I have said that St. Paul is the first Christian theologian and that all Christian theology is a footnote to Paul’s. By that, I mean he was the first to think meticulously and systematically about the Christian faith. He wrote his letters before the Gospels were written. His letter to the Romans, written around AD 57–58, was his longest and most systematic work on the Christian faith. It contains almost every major Christian teaching. In this letter, Paul reached the pinnacle of making sense of Christianity. Our second reading for today is from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 11, verses 33–36. As you can see, it is not a lengthy passage; however, it is forceful and punchy: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!” St. Paul used two words that have similar meanings—“inscrutable,” which means “impossible to understand or interpret,” and “unsearchable,” which means “unable to be clearly understood”—to describe God’s judgments and ways. If you noticed, the first word in that passage from St. Paul is “Oh.” It is the perfect syllable to express the wondering awe of the heart. When we cannot find words that are sufficient, that word suffices. I tell you, if God does not deserve our “Oh!” then nothing does, except the shallowness of our “I.” 

When unbelievers, such as agnostics and atheists, attack the faith, their usual question is, “How could an all-knowing (omniscient), all-good (omnibenevolent), and all-powerful (omnipotent) God allow the suffering of children, natural disasters, or the way animals suffer?” How could an omnibenevolent God allow leukemia to afflict a five-year-old? As a young priest, two years ordained and working in Memphis, Tennessee, I was called to St. Jude Children’s Hospital to anoint a 13-year-old girl with breast cancer. The girl had yet to develop breasts but was already afflicted with breast cancer. While I was there, I also saw babies and toddlers with cancer. I left the hospital a very sad man, and for several days I pondered: how could God allow these innocent children to suffer? How do we address this puzzle? In today’s second reading, St. Paul admits: God’s ways are impossible to understand or interpret. God's ways are profoundly confounding to us. The great St. Augustine puts it this way: “Si comprehendis, non est deus”— “if you comprehend, He is not God.” Put differently, “If you think you have understood Him, it is not God you have understood.” Does this mean we cannot know God? Not at all! Of course, we know some things about God. However, there is more we don’t know about God because of who God is. 

Agnostics, atheists, and even some of us might say, “Well, that is an escapist answer.” “Is saying that God is a mystery not an easy way out of the problem?” That is not so! As I said before, there is so much about God we don’t know because of who God is. I have said many times that God is not something in the world. God is not a thing or an item among the things and items in the world. If you look around the church, you can see your fellow parishioners. You can see the pews, the cross, the tabernacle, the altar, the lighted candles, the pulpit, the sanctuary, and the icons of Mother of Perpetual Help and St. Carlo Acutis. You can see the choir chairs, microphones, streaming cameras, Bose speakers on the wall, doors, windows, etc. If you go outside, you can see many things, like buildings, trees, plants, grasses, cars, electric poles, the ground you walk on, etc. We can also watch television, listen to radio stations, and read papers about events around us and around the world. If you need to know more about the physical world, you can consult physicists and other scientists, and they can tell you about things happening around the cosmos. All of these are objects, events, and experiences within the world. In philosophy, we say that those are categorical things. They can be categorized. We can define them: this thing, that thing. This is a plant; that is an electric pole. As massive as the Earth is, it is still definable. Jupiter, too, is massive, but can also be defined. We set a limit on it. We can say, "This is the sun,” and "That is the moon.” Looking around, I can say, “This is Mary-Ann,” and “That is Mary-Joe.” They are two different and separate individuals. They are definable and categorizable. But then, there is God. The Creator of all things, the reason why there is something rather than nothing, is not a component part in the universe. God is not a thing among others within the universe. The great mistake atheists and agnostics make is thinking of God as some big object that is somewhere in the world. So, they embark on the mission of finding him. And since they cannot find him as an item in the universe, they deny his existence. But that is not what God is. 

In our great Christian tradition, God is described as “totally other,” “totaliter aliter.” What does that mean? It means that God is not like Jupiter, Mars, the Moon, the Sun, etc. God cannot be compared to anything in the world. If God were an item in the world, we could define God. But God cannot be defined. The word “definition” comes from the Latin “definire,” meaning “to set a boundary, limit, or finish.” The true and living God cannot be defined or limited. No human being can set a boundary for God. God cannot be compared or contrasted with anything in the world. In principle, God is invisible. We cannot see God with our naked eye or with advanced technology like electron microscopes and scanning probe instruments. Our minds cannot grasp God's reality in its entirety. When you move into the reality of God, remember you are moving into the space where the streets have no names. If the streets have names, you will know where you are going. Right? If you don’t know your destination but have the address, your GPS can get you there. But when you are dealing with God, who is not a thing in the world, you are going into a place where the streets have no names. When I preached at the funeral of Nyyear, a two-year-old boy, I posed the question, “Why did God allow Nyyear to die in the way he died?” My answer: I have no idea! And that answer is not weak or evasive. It is the only coherent answer, given the nature of God. 

Although God is invisible, God is also a person. God is not simply there like a big rock, mountain, or force. God is a person. Look at us, human persons. Ain’t we mysterious? Yes indeed! When you meet someone and talk to that person, you can know some things about them. If the person is a significant figure, you can buy a book about them and read it. You can also Google them and read about them. But no matter how much you know about a person, something will always feel elusive and mysterious. A person always has a hidden, secret identity that is known only when they reveal it to you. Look at married couples. Sometimes when I am hearing confession, I hear a voice say, “Father, my husband or my wife is now more mysterious to me than he or she was before.” And when I ask, “How long have you been married?” I sometimes hear, “10, 20, 30, or 50 years.” Whenever I hear that, it dawns on me that the more I get into a human person, the stranger and more mysterious that person becomes. If a person is mysterious, imagine God, who is an infinite and undefinable person. So, when St. Paul says that God’s ways and judgments are impossible to understand, he is stating the obvious. Imagine a four- or five-year-old child’s relationship with his parents. They do understand that their parents love them, but they also wonder why their parents do strange and inscrutable things, like forcing them to go to bed when they just want to stay awake and play, or insisting that they go to school when they want to stay home, or saying no to more candies and sweets when they just want more. More to it, they also wonder why their parents, who profess to love them all the time, would take them to a guy who wears a white coat and sticks needles in them that hurt deeply. If children can put their feelings into words when they are receiving injections from a doctor or nurse, they are likely to say something like, “Dad and mom, you say you love me, right? But why are you presiding over my pain? Why do you bring me to a place of intense pain? Your ways are impossible to grasp for me. I just don’t know what you are doing.” 

Why that reaction? A child does not have the capacity to understand his parents’ ways and judgments. He does not understand why they want him to go to bed early. He does not understand why they say no to lots of candies and sweets. She does not yet comprehend why she must go to school. She has yet to grasp why mommy and daddy are standing by as a sharp object, a needle, is thrust into her skin, causing her sharp pain. Parents get it, but children, in principle, don’t. Now, take this description and lift it to the infinite degree: the difference between our consciousness and God’s consciousness. At some point in our lives, we may have asked: “How could God allow such a thing to happen?” Two kids are playing in front of their house when a driver loses control of the car and veers off the road straight toward where the kids were playing, killing them both. When that happens, we ask, “Why didn’t God prevent this from happening?” A crazy man or woman goes to a school and fires bullets at children and staff, killing several people and injuring many. We ask the question: “Where was God when this happened?” “How could God allow this?” It is not only agnostics and atheists who ask these questions; religious people also ask them. In fact, the more religious you are, the more you ask such questions. As finite persons, we cannot understand the ways and judgments of God, who is infinite. Since we cannot comprehend God in toto, what is our option now? Adopt the attitude of a child toward his or her parents: First, he knows his parents love him deeply. Secondly, he does not understand everything they do. Thirdly, yet he trusts them. St. Paul puts it this way, “Walk by faith, and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). 

God bless you!