Are we fools for believing in God’s promises?  Today is the first of April – a day when people are made to feel foolish for believing in something we say.  This “feast of fools” has medieval roots in the Liturgy of Good Friday which often falls in early April.  Jesus, the ultimate fool for God believes in God’s promises of a reign of peace and justice; a world wherein children are not starving and everyone can look forward to a long life of plenty and happiness – a world where, if a child does fall ill, his father has only to ask and healing is granted at once  . . . Jesus believes in those promises, labors to bring them fruition in the lives of those he touches –  refusing to abandon the Father’s will even at the cross.   

But our expectations for promises seem often not to be fulfilled, and cynicism, that we have been made fools for believing in such possibilities in a world that seems increasingly crueler to all but the wealthy and powerful, offers a powerful emotional trap.  Suffering caused by hatred, greed, violence and indifference to human needs is all too evident.  Why then should we believe in a God who promises something considerably better.  Aren’t we better off to have no expectations of goodness at all?  Then we won’t be disappointed.

A group of faculty, staff and students made a pilgrimage recently to the places in northern Spain and Rome where Ignatius of Loyola spent much of his life living into God’s promises.  We stopped and prayed the liturgy of the Eucharist at a little chapel in the suburbs of Rome called La Storta, where Ignatius and his companion, Deigo Lainez, stopped to venerate the shrine of Our Lady of the Way and to pray for their deepest desires.  For years Ignatius had been praying that God would “place him with His Son (Jesus)”, and grant him the intimate companionship of Jesus in his on-going work of salvation here on earth.  Specifically, Ignatius hoped to undertake the most challenging aspects of companionship with Jesus by enduring the suffering of the world that is a consequence of broken promises, violence and other sins of the human family.  Ignatius asked to be one who would be chosen to undertake some of the hardest tasks of fulfilling the Father’s promises for us.  Such a one the world would certainly call a fool.

At La Storta, as Ignatius prayed, God granted his deepest desire – both by placing him at the side of Jesus and the Cross – and by promising that he and his companions would flourish in their work of serving God’s reign.  Ignatius is known to have challenged his closest companions with the fact that their hopes were too low, that their expectations for the fulfillment of God’s promises was not nearly ambitious enough.  Now he received God’s own promise that he and those who chose to companion him would be companions of Jesus – in helping ameliorate the sufferings of the world – and being agents of fulfillment of God’s promises.  It remains hard to believe today.

Made agents of God’s promises by Baptism, we are invited to this task of making up for the suffering in the world so that from the least to the greatest all may know that God’s promises are reality itself.  To be a fool for God is to be among the wisest of all creation – for in believing in God’s promise of a Reign of Justice and Mercy means laboring with Jesus to bring every Divine promise to fruition through the power of the Spirit of Love. 

For that great gift, I will happily be an April Fool.