As Mass yesterday morning at Our Lady of Lourdes, the post-Communion reflection (sung by Elena) was For the Fruits of All Creation, with text accompanying a traditional Welsh melody. The song is recites various thing for which we thank God: the fruits of all creation, the harvests of the Spirit, for the wonders that astound us, and so on. For all these things, “Thanks be to God.”
The line that struck me was “For the truths that still confound us…Thanks be to God.”
My first reaction was, “Why be thankful for the fact that there are things we do not understand?”
But before that question was even fully formed in my mind, I apprehended the beauty of the song’s line of praise and thanksgiving. For a God we could fully grasp, who said or did nothing that confounded us, would be a very small God indeed. A God as small as ourselves.
That there are things we don’t fully understand, “truths that still confound us” reminds us that our God is bigger than we are, that God is mystery. That whatever we think we understand about God and God’s ways, there is still even more we do not and cannot understand.
Thanks be to God for the truths that still confound us.
Creo en Dios! 