Don't Ask It's A Mystery

We celebrate those events in the life of Christ in the Gospel as stories that are meant to be lived as we are inspired to live them. I’ve come to the realization that it’s not a mystery when I know I really understand a scripture concept and yet feel that I can't explain it. Yet, there is an undeniable urge to let our egos run rampant and we do our best to explain that which defies explanation

Somehow, the mistrust of all that has been handed down to us has led to the failure of the imagination, evidenced by language we choose that is comfortable and unchallenging to our senses. Sometimes we quickly turn the page or change the subject because something we encounter in scripture challenges our ability to fully comprehend its meaning...instead of just letting it rest long enough in our imagination for it to speak to us without words?

As we approach the fourth week in Advent we focus on the Annunciation according to Matthew (Matthew 1:18-24), a mystery of epic proportions that defies rational explanation. It bothers me when I hear some attempt to reduce the virgin birth to a mere story of an "unwed pregnant teenager." Have we come to a time when anything that does not stand up to conventional wisdom or that defies explanation should be characterized as primitive and infantile? Why do we think that an God would be confined to the confines of  man’s intellect and language to communicate His message to us? Metaphor and poetry reveal meaning, not explanation on a deeper personal level that is unique to each of us IF we are willing to open our hearts and suspend our ego and just listen?

Richard Rohr recalls visiting the Church of his youth at Christmas and found and drawn to the Crèche. Staring at the statue of the Baby he was moved by the scene. Of course he knew that this charming bucolic setting was not the way it really was; yet, it inspired his knowing that the Incarnation of God in man could not be denied.

When we allow God’s love to break though our consciousness and contemplate the mystery of the Annunciation and Virgin birth, we do we not run from it? Do we ask it to explain what it cannot? Or are we “virgin” enough to surrender to our deepest self and allow it to penetrate our very being?

"For many of us mystery became an adversary; unknowing became a weakness. The contemplative spiritual life is an ongoing reversal of this adjustment. It is a slow and sometimes painful process of becoming ‘little children’ again in which we first make friends with mystery and finally fall in love with it again. And in that love we find an ever increasing freedom to be who we really are in an identity that is continually emerging and never defined. We are freed to join the dance of life in fullness without having a clue about what the steps are…Confusion happens when mystery is an enemy and we feel we must solve it to master our destinies. And Ignorance is not knowing that we do not know. In the liberation of the dark night, we are freed from having to figure things out and we find delight in knowing that we do not know." (Gerald May, Mystery and Freedom,the Dark Night of the Soul p.133)