Contemplating the mystery

The Catechism of the Catholic Church unveils the magisterial teachings of our Tradition, while the writings and experiences of the saints, the preaching we have heard, and the spiritual books we have read all contribute to our understanding of God.

To contemplate the order and beauty of creation and to meditate on our own experience of the Lord reveals much about His ways and wonders.

In light of all that we do know about God, we must also readily assert that He remains a profound mystery.

We know the fundamentals of our faith, certainly what the Lord needs us to know to find salvation, but we can never apprehend the breadth of the Lord’s power, the depth of His love, or the wonder of His presence.

We cannot understand the fact that God always was and always will be.

We do not know what Purgatory or Heaven will be like.

We cannot explain how, at the same time, God knows our future and yet we retain our human freedom to make decisions.

How can God love every person as if we were the only one? The Lord’s glory, holiness, and power are overwhelming to us.

Thus, we can assert that God is simultaneously knowable and unknowable, beyond us and yet within and around us, closer than our own thoughts and dwelling beyond the stars.

God is so close to us that we can never avoid Him; He is so far beyond us that we can never fully possess Him.

This paradox may often frustrate or puzzle us, as we seek to know the Lord and His will for us.

God seems hidden, inscrutable, and silent much of the time. This mysterious nature of the divine may tempt us to give up the spiritual quest.
 

Going toward God

The mystics point the way forward as we progress toward God.

Saints like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila experienced a dark night of the soul, in which God was purifying their understanding and experience of His presence and light.

Gradually, they discovered their methods of prayer, their understanding of God, and their sense of His presence to be insufficient and unsatisfying. The Lord had seemed to withdraw His light from their view.

In this purifying darkness, these saints came to realize that God was leading them to a far deeper relationship with Himself, shattering the puny categories of definition which we as humans often impose on God.

If we refuse the human temptation to make God in our image, and seriously set out on the path of prayer and holiness, the Lord will lead us to a depth of grace which is beyond our sight, senses, and understanding.

We may never become great mystics like the spiritual giants of our Catholic tradition, but we all need to understand that God is infinitely greater than our apprehension of Him, that he abides in mystery and often hides Himself.

If Socratic wisdom is knowing that we do not know, then Christian wisdom is acknowledging that God’s light is so bright that it may often appear to our senses as darkness, that His presence is so profound that it may often seem to our experience to be absence.

Holding together our knowing God and our not knowing Him fully is a spiritual balancing act, but an essential task if we truly seek to become saints.

We all love a beautiful Mass, with uplifting music, an inspiring homily, and a prayerful community, but I also like praying alone in the dark before the Blessed Sacrament.

We must often pray over the Word of God and study our faith to understand it, but we also need to be absorbed in the silence and mystery of God, who is beyond words and thought.

The Lord is present in light and shadow, in silence and speech, in mighty actions of power and in the gentle breeze, and in joy and in sorrow.

As inscrutable as God may be, I love the mystery of the Lord, because this unknowing keeps me seeking, hoping, waiting, and striving for the dawn of eternal life.

As St. Paul says, “At present, we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)