Mystery Is Deep and Yet Vertical – A Brief Meditation on the Christian Meaning of Mystery

In the secular world, a “mystery” is something which baffles or eludes understanding, something which lies undisclosed. And the usual attitude of the world toward mystery is to solve it, to get to the bottom of it, or to uncover it. Mysteries must be overcome! The riddle or “whodunit” must be solved!

In the Christian and especially the Catholic world, “mystery” is something a bit different. Here, mystery refers to the fact that there are hidden dimensions in things, people, and situations that extend beyond their merely visible and physical dimensions.

One of the best definitions I have read of “mystery” is by the theologian and philosopher John Le Croix. Fr. Francis Martin introduced it to me some years ago in one of his recorded conferences. Le Croix says,

Mystery is that which opens temporality and gives it depth. It introduces a vertical dimension and makes of it a time of revelation, of unveiling.

Fr. Martin’s classic example of this to his students is the following:

Suppose you and I are at a party, and Smith comes in the door and goes straight away to Jones and warmly shakes his hand with both his hands. And I say, “Wow, look at that.” And you say, puzzled: “What’s the big deal, they shook hands … so what?” And then I tell you, “Smith and Jones have been enemies for thirty years.“

And thus there is a hidden and richer meaning than merely what meets the eye. This is mystery: something hidden, something that is accessible to those who know, who are initiated into the mystery and have come to grasp some dimension of it; it is the deeper reality of things.

In terms of faith, there is also a higher meaning that mystery brings. And thus Le Croix added above, It [mystery] introduces a vertical dimension, and makes of it a time of revelation, of unveiling.

Hence we come to appreciate something of God in all he does and has made. Creation is not just dumbly there. It has a deeper meaning and reality. It reveals its creator and the glory of Him who made it. The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands (Psalm 19:1).

Indeed, there is a sacramentality to all creation. Nothing is simply and dumbly itself; it points beyond and above, to Him who made it. The physical is but a manifestation of something and Someone higher.

In the reductionist world in which we live, such thinking is increasingly lost. And thus we poke and prod in order to solve the mysteries before us. And when have largely discovered something’s physical properties, we think we have exhausted its meaning; we have not. In a disenchanted age, we need to rediscover the glory of enchantment, of mystery. There is more than meets the eye. Things are deeper, richer, and higher than we can ever fully imagine.

Scripture, which is a prophetic interpretation of reality, starts us on our great journey by initiating us into many of the mysteries of God and His creation. But even Scripture does not exhaust the mystery of all things; it merely sets us on the journey ever deeper, ever higher. Mysteries unfold; they are not crudely solved.

For the Christian, then, mystery is not something to be solved or overcome so much as to be appreciated and reverenced. To every person we know and everything we encounter goes up the cry, O magnum et admirabile mysterium (O great and wondrous mystery)! Now you’re becoming a mystic.

Here is Fr. Francis Martin speaking briefly on mystery:

Indeed, there is a sacramentality to all creation. Nothing is simply and dumbly itself; it points beyond and above, to Him who made it. The physical is but a manifestation of something and Someone higher.

G. K. Chesterton wrote (I don't have his exact words) about how the doctrines of the church have to be specifically true, that to go a hair's breadth off is to fall into heresy. Here is an example of a statement that, in and of itself, is doctrinally accurate, but it would only take a hair's-breadth movement to fall into Hindu pantheist heresy, that all of creation is a manifestation of God, not as a reflection of God, but as a part of the Oneness.

Without the grounding of Scripture, the church's mysteries wander off into heretical fantasies; but without the mysteries, the Scripture reverts to the Law, an ethical document frozen in time and space, without the infusion of the Holy Spirit within us to lead us, to use C.S. Lewis' phrase, further up and further in.

Your objection to this use of the word "mystery" is based on the assumption that "There are no more mysteries left to those that read the scriptures prayerfully, for understanding; all have been revealed."

This is not true of even things which are natural, and cannot ever be true of things which are supernatural.

It is not true of natural things, because every discovery in the natural sciences suggests thousands of additional questions and makes us aware of the apparently expanding dimensions of what we do not know.

It cannot be true in the supernatural realm,because it would be denying that the Divine knowledge is infinite, and thus surpasses human knowledge, not just in degree, but even in kind.

I love these words from Psalm 139:

How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.
When I awake,
I am still with You.

And this from Isaiah 58:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

The infinity of God predicates the dimension of "mystery" in all human knowledge.

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>>This is not true of even things which are natural, and cannot ever be true of things which are supernatural.” <<

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Things “natural” are not of relevance in the Kingdom of Yehova. The scriptures tell us that beyond a shadow of doubt. As Paul explained, that which we see is composed of that which we cannot see. (Heb 11:3)

All things that were called “mysteries” in the word of God have been revealed therein.

The things supernatural that have not been revealed in the scriptures have never been called mysteries in the word of God. They are the things beings in corruptible bodies cannot experience, but as Paul said, when we are face to face with Yehova, “we shall know as we are known.” (1Cor 13:12)

Until that time, it is foolishness to waste time in speculation on that which we cannot conceive.

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