This Sunday’s Gospel reading is one of those passages of Scripture that is very hard to understand. Jesus seems to be contradicting himself.  He makes it very clear that the number one priority of his followers is to put him first, to give him priority in their lives, even if this means going against the core values expounded in the Ten Commandments and indeed in his own teaching elsewhere.

Honouring one’s parents and loving one’s neighbours are essential. Yet here Jesus puts these in second place. What on earth could he mean?

I confess that I don’t know the answer to this question! And in all the almost 50 years of my priesthood I have never heard a convincing explanation. I have come to the conclusion that this must be placed in the “too hard” basket, along with  other great, unfathomable mysteries of life.

The really great mystery of life is surely the reality of the suffering of the innocent. Why do bad things happen to good people? The pat answer that “God writes straight with crooked lines”, or that God’s plans are different from ours, doesn’t ring true when tragedies occur. Why does an all-good, all-powerful God allow suffering to occur, often in incredibly horrific circumstances?

Again, I confess that I don’t know the answer to this. And nobody really does. We can guess, or postulate, but in the end there’s no certainty.

Personally, grappling with the uncertainties and mysteries of life leads me to wonder again and again about what happened at Easter. While I do see the mindless suffering and death of Jesus as symbolic of the mindless suffering that is part-and-parcel of human life, the question, “Why?” remains illusive.

And yet, the fact that the Easter story doesn’t end on Good Friday provides so much food for thought. Against all odds, Jesus’ followers met the risen Jesus, and their lives were transformed as a consequence of this.  They saw that suffering and death were not “dead ends”. There is no evidence that they then understood the meaning of life’s mysteries, and they certainly weren’t somehow freed from suffering. However they saw life differently. They were filled with a joyful hope that empowered their future. Underpinning this hope was the belief that, “If it happened to Jesus, it can happen to us!”

We are invited, over and over again, to affirm our own faith in that same belief. Difficulties, questions and doubts can remain, and can challenge. Confusing lessons from Jesus as we find in this Sunday’s Gospel remain. Yet despair doesn’t have to overwhelm us. Trust, hope and belief can give us the strength we need to allow our lives to be transformed, as have the lives of millions who have gone before us.