Our Opening Antiphon today proclaims: "The Lord has done marvels for us". The word "marvels" may make us think of wonderful, eye-catching deeds of splendour. All God's deeds are, indeed, extraordinary, but God's most extraordinary deeds are ordinarily done in ordinary circumstances. Even though they are often contradictory in nature.

The first reading gives us a fine example of how God works in unexpected ways. God gave the mission to "fulfil the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah" and so to start rebuilding the Temple to a non-Israelite, Cyrus king of Persia. If an Israelite king had been received this mission, we would not have been surprised. God is a God of marvels because he is a God of surprises.

In sociological terms we may say that all God's deeds are non-uniform events: they do not come in a predictable or uniform pattern, for God does not work in predictable ways. Many Jewish exiles could never have imagined that God would choose Cyrus to rebuild the Temple. So also many people did not want Joseph Ratzinger to be elected Pope, but God does not listen to opinion polls! No matter how Benedict XVI carries out his mission, the Lord has done marvels for us.