People often wonder why there are "religious truths" that we cannot understand. What purpose does a mystery serve in our relations with God? Why should there be matters in our Faith which are above our comprehension?
If we give this a bit of thought, then the reason for mysteries will be understandable.
First of all, they enable us to make an act of faith in God. If God gave us truths which we could reason out for ourselves, we should not be trusting to His truthfulness but to our intelligence. If you take from God only what you can verify, you are treating Him as you do your fellow man. Indeed, hardly as well, for you take many things from your fellow man which you do not and cannot verify.
It is a rare man who understands all matters of history, science, and government, yet most of us have faith in these things. See how we trust our lives and national honor to the leader of our country.
He frequently does not and cannot give an explanation of policies. Facts which he has and which justify his actions must be kept secret for reasons of the public welfare. Yet we have such confidence in his intelligence and integrity that we trust him. That is our act of faith in the government, in a man. Should we not trust to the integrity and intelligence of the Ruler of the world?
If, therefore, God sees fit to tell us something which we could never know by our own reason, why not accept it as an acquisition to our knowledge and be grateful for it? How many things the astronomer and chemist and historian tell us which most of us cannot reason out and yet which we accept gladly? All life may be said to be an act of faith in one another.
Why, then, should we not make an act of faith in God?
Now if there were no mysteries, we could not make an act of faith in God. A mystery is something above reason, but not against it. It is something which, though not implying a contradiction, is yet so full of difficulty that we have to exclaim: How can it be! God simply says: "It is so, trust me."
There are mysteries in our own lives, mysteries in the world about us. If you told anyone before Columbus' time that there were people on the other side of the world, they would say: "Impossible! How can it be! They would fall off, they would be head downwards!" If the law of gravitation solves the difficulty, why may not God, in His own time, solve all the mysteries? One of the joys of heaven will be that we shall understand everything.
I cannot say it too often, - God does not want us to understand Him, as much as He wants us to trust Him and freely love Him. If He sees fit to reveal certain things about Himself to us which we could never learn by ourselves, should we not thank Him? Should we also not expect God to be a mysterious Being? Nature is certainly mysterious, why should nature's God not be so?
If, then, there are revelations about the mysterious God, they must be in the nature of mysteries. A man is a mystery to himself. He does not know with complete certitude how his mind commands his body, or how he remembers things. If man is a mystery to himself, why should not Almighty God be a mystery to him?
In imparting to us, therefore, information about Himself, as in the Trinity and Incarnation and the Eucharist, we should expect mysteries. It is for that reason that our religion is called our holy Faith. It is based on faith in God. Its foundation is the veracity of God. We know that God is Truth, that if He says something it is so, and accordingly we say: "Speak, Lord, thy servant hears."
Through the Church God speaks to us. Our duty is to accept what He tells us gratefully, and, by doing as directed, to merit one day seeing face to face the Infinite God in whose light we shall be enlightened and in whose presence we shall rejoice forevermore. “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man to conceive the things that God has prepared for them that love Him."
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Adapted from God and Myself, An Inquiry into the True Religion,
by Martin J Scott, S.J.
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