No Answers

"In contrast to that, true believing means looking the whole of reality in the face, unafraid and with an open heart, even if it goes against the picture of faith that, for whatever reason, we make for ourselves….
“We are rather too inclined to forget that in the Book of Job…God declares Job to be righteous — Job, who has hurled the most outrageous accusations at God — while he rejects Job’s friends as speakers of falsehood, those friends who had defended God and had found some kind of good sense and answer for everything.
“Observing Advent simply means talking with God the way Job did. It means just seeing the whole reality and burden of our Christian life

without fear and bringing it before the face of God, as judge and savior, even if, like Job, we have no answer to give about it all, and the only thing left is to leave it to God himself to answer and to tell Him how we are standing here in our darkness with no answers.”
– Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, What it Means to Be a Christian

(emphasis added)

Photograph by Pier Paolo Cito/Associated Press