"It's Pat!* Answers" edition.

You humans, and your demands for answers. Don't get me wrong, there are answers to important questions, but your very nature resists them. In fact, questions are often like a tree: the visible part (i.e. the words we use) are like leaves that show signs of illness. The majority of human questions are variants of "Heal my leaves!" The problem is that the actual disease is in the roots.

Jesus answers a deep question often with an answer that simultaneously skirts the question's branches and buries into the root. If we are to have answers, then Jesus provides an excellent model for their delivery. Pat answers may be technically correct, but it is always important to ask, do they address the symptom, or the cause? It costs us more to answer questions with a true ear than with a quick tongue.

Q: Who is my neighbor?

A: Have mercy. Be a neighbor.

Q: Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left.

A: It is not mine to grant.

Q: Why couldn't we drive out that demon?

A: That kind requires prayer.

John the Baptist tells us to "Prepare the way of the Lord," not to "Provide answers for the way of the Lord." Though St. Paul admonishes us to have ready answers, part of having answers is also making space, preparing a way, leaving room for the Ru'ach to move without our meddling. Pat answers are like laundry baskets: great tools, lousy vehicles.

*Incidentally, the very funny creator of the Pat character, Julia Sweeney, from Saturday Night Live starred in her own one-woman show "And God Said Ha!" and is a deeply religious atheist. And thus, the circle draws to its incompletion.