God of Surprises

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Hughes’s own spiritual hunger was not satisfied, however, by ministering to others and in 1983 he left to embark on the process of introspection in first Ireland, then the Isle of Skye, that led him two years later to publish his best-known book, God of Surprises. It was a word-of-mouth success. He described God of Surprises as “a guidebook for the inner journey in which we are all engaged”.

Chapter Eleven focuses on the passion and resurrection of Christ. Faulty understanding of these two important events in Christ’s life contribute to producing a distorted image of God and deter us from our spiritual journey. Key to his appeal was that he neither preached perfection nor held himself up as anything special. He was, in his own words, one of the many “bewildered, confused or disillusioned Christians who have a love-hate relationship with the church to which they belong, or once belonged”. His winning ability to see God in everyday life was complemented by his refusal to be bound by dogma or denomination. In the Seventh Chapter, the author gives some exercises that will help us recognize the action of God in our lives and give him praise, thanks and glory for it. He suggests reviewing one’s consciousness and imaginative contemplation. At the end of the chapter, he presents some biblical texts which could be useful for imaginative contemplation. Gerard William Hughes, Jesuit priest and spiritual writer, born 22 March 1924; died 4 November 2014In the Fourth Chapter, the author suggests some methods of prayer. These methods help us meet the God who is actually out to meet us. Each of us has our own unique way of praying and hence may find one or the other method suitable. The suggestions of the author however could be a useful tool for those struggling to pray. He gives a good variety of methods to choose from. Chapter Five shows how the journey is not only made with our minds and with the religious part of ourselves, but involves our whole being and affects every aspect of it, our relations to other people, our attitude to health, wealth, reputation, power, and our reactions to the economic, social and political structures in which we live. Subsequent books, including his account of a pilgrimage to Jersualem, reproduced the same approach as God of Surprises but did not match its impact. A memoir, God, Where Are You? (1997), and God in All Things (2003) saw Hughes at his most pessimistic about the fate of his church. “Christianity today has reached the most critical moment in its history … the institutions, forms and structures that served us well in earlier centuries no longer answer the needs of our day.” This failure, he believed, had given rise to fundamentalism. If Gerard Hughes had expressed during the Inquisition what he'd written here, he would surely have been branded a heretic. Hughes openly challenges many of the most commonly-observed pillars of organized religion but productively offers solutions for churches progressing with the times to serve modern humanity.

As a baptized Catholic who seeks meaning in life and spirituality, yet feels alienated by organized religion, I found this book to be a great comfort. Perhaps it was because Hughes wrote things that validated my own views. I'm sure some of the more conservative Catholics would say he is way off, but, well, he's a priest too and views like his will do a lot more to help people and the Church.This is a guidebook for the journey of life which began at conception and will end at death. It is written especially for bewildered, confused or disillusioned Christians, who have a love-hate relationship with the Church. God is a ‘God of Surprises’ because He is not remote or distant, dwelling only in tabernacles and temples of stone, but near to us. Smiling and waiting to embrace us despite our confusion, bewilderment, anger etc. This book aims to suggest some ways of detecting the hidden treasure in what may be considered a most unlikely field, oneself. Chapter Nine is about Christ our treasure, whom we often take for granted and fail to recognize. The Jews did not recognize him and sometimes neither do we. This truth is illustrated in a letter written by an imaginary parish priest complaining of the disruptive behaviour of one of his parishioners. His honesty about his own struggle to believe and his brushes with depression – his father was a depressive, two of his sisters took their own lives and he feared that he might follow them – attracted large numbers to his retreats. His record, while Catholic chaplain at Glasgow University from 1967 until 1975, of being twice dismissed by the local archbishop and twice reinstated made him something of a hero figure for those battling to promote discussion and debate within an authoritarian church.