God’s patterns, and his miracles, show he’s in charge of all

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Ez 17:22-24
Second Reading: 2 Cor 5:6-10
Gospel Reading: Mk 4:26-34

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, a branch breaks and Ophelia drowns. Did she die because the branch broke or because Shakespeare wanted her to die?

The answer is “either – both – whichever you please,” says C.S. Lewis. “The alternative suggested by the question is not a real alternative at all – once you have grasped that Shakespeare is making the whole play.”

Similarly, we ask whether we developed scientifically or by God’s design. Again, the alternative is not a real alternative at all, once we realize that God does everything.

In this Sunday’s First Reading, God says, “All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.”

We can take this literally, about the growth of trees, or allegorically, about God’s choice of Israel from the nations. (Christ uses similar imagery in the Gospel Reading to describe God’s kingdom.) In either case, it describes God’s work in the world.

Biologists describe the growth of trees in terms of seeds, sunlight, water, temperature, and cell division. Historians describe Israel’s history in terms of food, land, power struggles, war, and peace.

However, the First Reading says that it is God who does all this. Does that mean biologists and historians are wrong?

No. What biologists and historians do is describe the patterns according to which God works in the world.

We do not have to understand biology or history. However, we must understand the relation of God to the world.

As an analogy, think of the world as God’s card table. We can see the cards, but not the player. What scientists do is observe the cards and describe the patterns according to which the player plays them. The cards do not “play themselves.” No card can, of itself, cause the play of any other card. It is the player who determines everything, not one card falling to the table without his knowledge.

“The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is concrete and immediate,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “The sacred books powerfully affirm God’s absolute sovereignty over the course of events.”

God normally runs things according to patterns, which we recognize. However, we believe, and some of us actually know, that occasionally he does things in different way. Then we say he has performed a miracle.

Miracles make us realize that God is master of the universe. When Jesus changed water into wine suddenly at Cana, he showed that he was the possessor of the power behind normal wine-making. When he cures a cancer suddenly, he shows that he is the possessor of the power behind normal healing.

Miracles do not prove the existence and power of God any more than his normal running of the universe proves it. If, as St. Paul says in the Second Reading, “we walk by faith, not by sight,” we see God in everything around us, not just miracles.

You have probably heard the story of the man who asked God to save him from a flood. A boat came by and then a helicopter, but he refused them both because he was waiting for God.

God made boats and helicopters. They operate according to his patterns. He even made the human beings who discovered these patterns and built the boats and the helicopters.

We need not wait for miracles. We can exclaim, “Lord God, how great you are!” for a beautiful sky, a child’s face, a computer, a highway overpass, or well cooked food. (That is why we say grace before and after meals!) 

As this Sunday’s Psalm says, “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O most high; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night.”

Father Hawkswell's course, “The Catholic Faith in Plain English,” has now ended, but all the materials (video and print) will remain available online free of charge  at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course until the end of August.