I’ve Been Wondering …

I’m puzzled by why we refer to the decades of the Rosary as mysteries, or speak about “sacred mysteries” in the liturgy.  What exactly does this mean?

Let’s start by making a distinction between what I’ll call “little m” mysteries and “big M” Mysteries.  In contemporary culture the common understanding of the term “mystery” has come to be associated with “puzzle,” something that is not understood but can be figured out (like “the mystery of the great pyramid”), or solved, once the appropriate clues are found.  Or “mystery” sometimes implies strangeness or weirdness.  Sometimes the word may also be taken to imply secrecy, or perhaps even something dark and sinister, as in the so-called “mystery religions” of the ancient world that involved secret ceremonies revealed only to those initiated into the cult, but withheld or concealed from those outside.  What all of them have in common is that they are ultimately understandable by the human mind, and that means they are way too small to qualify as true Mysteries.

When the Church talks about “Mysteries,” it is talking about the “big M” Mystery, something so great and profound that it goes beyond anything we can understand, or put into words, or even imagine with our minds; it is speaking of our encounter with the Holy, with God, who is beyond all understanding.

Saint Anselm, one of the Doctors of the Church, writing in 1078, recognized that all our ideas and words stem from our experience of the world, and are therefore inadequate when applied to God, who exists beyond the physical world.  Anselm defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be thought.”  Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, put it more accessibly, writing, “What we call holy in the world – a person, a place, a set of words or pictures – is so because it is a transitional place, a borderland, where the completely foreign is brought together with the familiar.  Here is somewhere that looks like it belongs within the world we are at home in, but in fact it leads us directly into strangeness.”  God works in wonderful ways, whispering through the things of our ordinary experience to draw us to him, but the problem is that we too often struggle fruitlessly to understand him, to “solve” the Mystery of his love, of his compassion, of his mercy, as we would solve a puzzle.  “Big M” Mysteries cannot be grasped with our minds, we can only embrace them with our hearts.

Perhaps the closest we can come to an appreciation of what “Mystery” is, is from our experience of love.  Think about someone you love deeply, then imagine trying to explain why you love them.  Could you do it by making a list?  When you are in love you may write poetry, you may sing, you may sit quietly together, but there is no way to put it into words.  It is one of those transitional experiences that, “looks like it belongs within the world we are at home in, but in fact … leads us directly into strangeness.”

The consecrated host at Mass, the signs and symbols used in sacraments, the episodes we meditate on as we pray the rosary, are familiar things, but if we open our hearts in faith they become portals that lead us beyond the ordinariness of our experience, into the embrace of God, who is the “big M” Mystery beyond all imagining.