There Is No App for Mystery: Why Priests and the Religious Will Always Matter

I recently returned from a parish pilgrimage to Fatima, Lourdes and other pilgrimage sites in Spain, where I encountered questions that arise when faith meets the mysteries of human life.

Some pilgrims struggled to understand why the Blessed Virgin Mary foretold that Jacinta and Francisco would die young while Lucia would remain to communicate the message entrusted to them. Lucia eventually lived to the age of 97. “Why did the younger visionaries have to die so early?” they asked.

Similar questions arise whenever a young person dies suddenly or a mother dies in childbirth. I suggested that perhaps they had fulfilled the purpose for which God had sent them into the world. Yet I acknowledged that this response was rooted in faith rather than a definitive explanation. Some pilgrims remained dissatisfied. They insisted that they still did not understand. I answered honestly that neither did I.

At Lourdes, another question arose. Why have many people reportedly experienced healing through the water from the spring associated with St Bernadette, while Bernadette herself suffered from tuberculosis for years and eventually died from the disease? Again, I had no definitive explanation, only an invitation to trust in the mystery of God’s providence.

Later, at Loyola in Spain, a woman asked why St Ignatius of Loyola had to suffer shattered legs in battle before his conversion. I recalled the words of the prophet Isaiah: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8). I invited the pilgrims to consider the fruits of Ignatius’s conversion. The Jesuit Order, which he founded with his companions, has contributed greatly to the Church and the world.

Priests and Religious as Ministers of Mystery

These questions led me to reflect on the place of priests and religious in our world. Every day, people turn to them with questions about suffering, loss, hope, purpose, God and the meaning of existence. Despite the remarkable achievements of science, technology and philosophy, life remains clothed in mystery.

Mystery is not simply a puzzle that disappears once a solution is found. It is a depth of reality that we can encounter but never fully comprehend. There are moments when our familiar explanations fail and reason reaches its limits. At such times, we are invited to respond with humility, wonder, faith and trust. It is precisely at this threshold of human experience that the presence and ministry of priests and religious become especially important.

Their vocation is rooted in this dimension of mystery. This does not mean abandoning reason or embracing irrationality. Rather, it means recognising a deeper way of knowing, grounded in grace and encounter.

In Method in Theology, Bernard Lonergan explores religious experience and conversion as a transformation of consciousness in which one’s horizon of meaning expands through being in love with God. Such transformation reorders values and priorities, producing fruits such as peace, purposeful living, commitment to transcendent values and concern for the common good. Faith does not eliminate reason; it opens us to realities that reason alone cannot exhaust.

Arthur Brooks, in The Meaning of Your Life, also reflects on how human beings seek understanding and meaning beyond analytical reasoning. Scientific inquiry enables us to solve technical problems and improve material conditions. Yet love, beauty, suffering, forgiveness and religious experience cannot be fully captured by the methods used to explain chemical reactions or engineering principles.

When we encounter a beautiful sky, witness the birth of a child, grieve the loss of a loved one or experience God’s presence in prayer, words may fail us. We know that something significant has happened, even when we cannot adequately explain it. Such experiences point towards a horizon of meaning beyond what can be measured or experimentally verified.

The priesthood and consecrated life find their natural home in this religious horizon, offering companionship and direction to those seeking meaning. Priests and religious inspire confidence not merely through their words but through their own encounter with the mystery they proclaim. Their credibility rests on lives shaped by faith and a willingness to accompany others through uncertainty.

Mystery will continue to draw human beings into questions that science alone cannot answer: Why am I here? Why do innocent people suffer? What is the meaning of love? What awaits us beyond death?

Artificial intelligence applications can offer counselling-style responses, generate homilies and answer questions using information drawn from vast amounts of data. Yet producing an answer is not the same as experiencing the reality it describes. An AI system does not itself experience grief, faith, divine love or the struggle to find meaning. It can generate words about these experiences, but it cannot offer the lived witness of a person whose faith has been tested and deepened through them.

This is why priests and religious men and women remain important. Their vocation is not to compete with scientists, politicians, academics, entrepreneurs, social commentators or social media influencers. It is to accompany people through life’s mysteries and bear witness to a reality deeper than productivity, fame or measurable outcomes.

To fulfil this mission, however, they must allow themselves to be formed by the mystery they proclaim. They must learn to live with ambiguity, resist simplistic answers and help people face life’s paradoxes without surrendering to despair.

A Call to Genuine Encounter and Openness to Mystery

A troubling incident illustrates the consequences of offering simplistic answers to profound human suffering.

A woman who had given birth to five daughters was expecting a sixth child. A medical scan indicated that the unborn baby was also female. In an Igbo cultural context where excessive value was placed on male children, she felt devastated and abandoned by God despite her deep faith and religious devotion.

In her distress, she approached a priest who assured her that God would change the baby’s sex if he placed her photograph inside the tabernacle. Overjoyed, she gave him the picture, and he placed it there. When she eventually gave birth to another girl, her disappointment deepened. She felt betrayed by both God and the priest.

Disturbed by what had happened, I confronted the priest. He argued that too much education had made some priests doubt the power of prayer offered with faith. His response implied that the woman’s lack of faith was responsible for the absence of the promised miracle.

Unable to continue the conversation, I turned my attention to helping the woman and her husband deal with their distress. The incident left me wondering how often extraordinary claims are presented as demonstrations of divine power when, in reality, they risk damaging authentic faith.

Whatever the priest’s intentions, such pastoral approaches can deepen suffering rather than bring healing. Ministry should never make people feel responsible for their pain because they supposedly lack faith. Nor should priests promise divine intervention as though God’s action could be guaranteed through a particular ritual or gesture.

Instead, every encounter with suffering is an opportunity to help people trust in God, even when answers remain elusive. The temptation to impress others through extraordinary claims or displays of spiritual power must never overshadow the call to genuine faith. The goal of ministry is not to eliminate mystery but to help people encounter God, who is Mystery itself.

If priests and religious embrace this vocation of accompanying people through life’s uncertainties, they will become more faithful servants of those entrusted to their care. The future may increasingly belong to algorithms, automation and artificial intelligence. Yet as long as human beings love, suffer, hope, grieve and seek God and the meaning of their lives, there will remain a place for those who accompany them on their journey through mystery.