Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara
Homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN
Sunday, September 20, 2026
In today’s first reading (Isaiah 55:6-9), Prophet Isaiah presents one of the Old Testament’s most theologically rich and revealing passages. It emphasizes the indisputable reality that although God is so near to us, He remains radically other: “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near… For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” To amplify this notion, the great St. Augustine said, “God is nearer to me than I am to myself.” Is God near to us? Yes indeed! But where the rubber meets the road is in the problem of human suffering. Suffering always tests God’s nearness. Suffering is a reality that affects everyone. Everybody suffers! Even a newborn child suffers. The first thing a child does the moment he or she is expelled from the mother’s womb is to cry. Why? Because, for the first time, the baby is exposed to a harsher environment. To suffer is to live in a harsh environment that can sometimes be life-threatening.
Many people, including religious people, wrestle with the question: if God is infinitely close to all things, including us, how could God be presiding over this disaster? Why is God allowing us to suffer? The answer is in Isaiah: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord” (55:8). Is God close to us in our suffering? Yes, indeed! But will we understand God’s purpose in allowing our suffering? Not always! God says, “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).
Let me offer this silly analogy to buttress my point. Of all the lower animals God created, dogs are humanity’s best friend. Dogs are amazing animals. When I was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I had a male dog named Max. I bought him as a puppy, and he grew up with me. Max knew I loved him dearly. But I will never forget one experience. I took him to the veterinarian for regular checkups and shots. As soon as I lifted him and placed him on the doctor’s table, he started whimpering. He knew what was coming: the shots. Before the shots, the doctor wanted blood samples for tests. He asked me to hold Max. As soon as the doctor started to draw blood from him, my dog looked at me with deep sadness. His expression seemed to ask, “You who love me, why are you doing this to me?”
Max knew I was his master, his friend, his companion, and his caretaker, yet I was also presiding over his pain and suffering. The look on his face clearly said, “How could you be doing this to me?” Even as I stroked Max’s back, it wasn’t enough to explain why I was taking part in his anguish. Though I tried to talk to Max and explain that the shots were good for him, my efforts failed to produce the desired result. When we got into the car, Max avoided me. Not until we got home and I gave him his favorite bone did he forget what had transpired. There was no way I could have explained the situation to my dog in a way he could understand, because there is a qualitative difference between his capacity to understand and mine. There is something fundamentally different about the way I see and imagine the world and the way he does. This may not be a compelling example, but it’s an analogy that hints at God’s relationship with us. Do we go through suffering in a way that makes us look at God as presiding over our calamity? Yes! Do we look at God with the same look that Max gave me? Yeah!
Parents often struggle to explain to their kids why they need to take pills or get injections when they are sick, because they are too young to understand the purpose of the pain of an injection or swallowing medicine. They are too young to understand why they should endure all that. This is also an analogy to God’s relationship to us when we suffer. The problem with suffering is our inability to comprehend it. When we suffer, we question God’s nearness. We ask how God could forget us; we ask why and how God, who promises never to forget us, will preside over the adversity that has befallen us. But is God close to us? Absolutely, yes! Even if a mother forgets her child, God promises not to forget us. At the same time, let’s not forget that as high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are God’s ways above our ways and God’s thoughts above our thoughts. If someone asks you, “How come we suffer?” feel free to answer, “I don’t know. I am like a child who does not know or understand the need to take medicine and allow shots to be given to him.” But there is someone who loves me, who is present in my situation, who may not even, in principle, begin to make sense of it to me because of the radical difference between him and me.
God bless you!
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