Incomprehension, Wonder, and the Search for Truth

Or, Why It Is Better Not to Understand Everything Immediately — Part 2

Julius Sergius Von Klever, Christ Walking on the Waters, c. 1880 (source)

Last week’s post concluded with observations on non-verbal communication, I would like to circle back to the theme of accessibility as a function of rational understanding. For this is an area in which many huge mistakes were made in the twentieth century, mistakes from which we are still reeling decades later. 

It was—and remains—a commonplace of liturgical reform that the people in the pews must “understand all the prayers and ceremonies.” There must be no remainder, no residue of incomprehension. This drove the total vernacularization, the dumbed-down translations, the saying of nearly everything out loud, the visibility of the priest versus populum, and so forth. Nothing must be left inaccessible, implicit, hidden, or difficult of access.

What I find curious is that this is completely contrary to the normal way in which human beings are meant to learn and grow.

As babies and children, we are constantly up against what we cannot understand. Those who spend time with little ones see heart-wrenching (and sometimes amusing) exhibitions of frustration every day, as these eager souls struggle to clasp and navigate the giant world they must live in. Our intellectual growth occurs as a result of the inward drive to know (“all men by nature desire to know,” Aristotle famously said at the opening of his Metaphysics). Wonder is the name of our reaction to what we cannot see through, cannot instantly grasp. In a healthy soul, this wonder then moves us to seek to understand. When we lose the capacity for wonder, we lose the capacity for learning.

In the Gospels we see several instances of incomprehension, where Our Lord does not say “Okay, let’s break down into synodal discussion groups and get to the bottom of this. Voting will follow, then a post-synodal dominical exhortation.” He lets His companions stew in their lack of understanding, because they still need to grow, and they need the challenge of not getting it. Mary and Joseph didn’t understand the words He was saying (Lk 2:50); His apostles didn’t understand, either (Mt 16:9, Lk 18:34). Jesus often did things without explaining why, as when he sent His apostles across the lake without Him, knowing He would later walk across it and scare the living daylights out of them (Mk 6:45–51); or when He slept in the hull during the big storm (Mt 8:23–27); or when He escaped to go into remote places to pray, in spite of the crowds clamoring for more sermons (Lk 6:12). Scripture tells us that many of the most important things Jesus said were understood by His disciples only after the Resurrection or after Pentecost.