One of my mentors in college, Msgr. Michael Osborn, taught us that the word “mystery” has a deep and important theological meaning. For most of us, mystery is a genre of entertainment: the mystery books of Agatha Christie or stories of the detective Sherlock Holmes. In this sense, mystery means something like a puzzle to solve or a case to crack. If you work at it with the right clues and for long enough you’ll be able to figure it out. Other times we may use mystery in the sense of a fact completely and forever unknowable, as in “it’s a mystery how the 1993 Notre Dame Fighting Irish lost to Boston College.”

But Msgr. Osborn taught us that mystery - which in Ancient Greek is μυστήριον / musterion (impress your friends…) had the sense of “something you could know something or even a lot about, but never know everything about.” The Holy Trinity is one of those mysteries. We know that God is one, in three Persons. How does that work exactly? We know something, but can never know everything. It’s a μυστήριον / musterion.

There seem to be a lot of mysteries in the Bible. We read in Isaiah 55 today: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”

Yet a critique of Christians for a long time has been that we use this idea of God’s-Will-As-Mystery as a cop-out when we cannot or will not explain something. For example, a tragedy strikes a family and they rightly want to understand why the all-loving God would not prevent the tragedy. “Ah, well, God’s ways are not our ways.” While true, it may not be much comfort - or at least it could be seen as a way to avoid having to dig for understanding.

The more I confront the real mysteries of the Christian life, in my own and in our families in the parish, the more I turn back to Msgr. Osborn’s definition of mystery. No matter how hard I study and pray I will never be able to fully understand God’s thoughts or ways. They are as high above me as the heavens from earth. But… I really want to understand as much as possible and so I keep asking Him for understanding. I keep reading the scriptures and reflecting with other Christians. I keep meditating and discerning His will in my life and the life of those I serve.

If you are facing a real mystery in your life - or in your family - don’t give up. Don’t write God off as either unknowable (we can know a lot!) or obviously not-caring (He does care, in fact He loves you!) God is a mystery of which we can know much, but never all. So we Christians keep at it… until one day when we will see Him face to face in the halls of heaven as saints, among the saints, and understand God as He is.

Keep reading the bulletin - there is so much good stuff coming up and important news to share. Keep praying, and remember that the family that prays together, stays together!

Fr. David Halm, C.S.C.

Pastor

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