The Gospel celebrate those events in the life of Christ that serve as models for us to follow and live. Over time many of our original scriptural interpretations that we were taught to believe were often challenged, leaving a void in which literal meanings no longer had meaning. A sense of knowing replaced the literal as the Words became flesh in us. The insights that evolved were clearer, simpler, and more beautiful. I’ve come to realize that I am comfortable with mystery and don't feel the need to explain what cannot be explained in words.
Somehow, the mistrust of mystery and the need to explain mystery has led to a failure of the imagination, evidenced by the childishly comfortable language that we used to explain it away. Our prayers become a self-centered recitations in which we purport to “confess” our weaknesses by citing our strength. These prayers are anything but the lifting of our hearts and minds to God. How can we listen if we are so busy talking?
Gerald May writes in The Dark Night of the Soul that “It is the same for all important things in life; there is a mystery within them that our definitions and understandings cannot grasp. Definitions and understandings are images and concepts created by our brains to symbolize what is real. Our thoughts about something are never the thing itself. Further, when we think logically about something, our thoughts come in a logical sequence – one after another. Reality is not confined to such linearity; it keeps happening all at once in each instant. The best our thoughts can do is try to keep a little running commentary in rapid, breathless sequence.”
Now in the fourth week of Advent we focus on the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38), a mystery of epic proportions that defies rational explanation. It stuns us to 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 did not stand up to reason or that we couldn’t explain, should be characterized as primitive and infantile? Why do we think that we can confine an almighty spiritual being to man’s intellect and his ability to communicate? Do we not see how metaphor and poetry reveal meaning, not explanation, on a much deeper and intimate level?
A few years ago we had an opportunity to travel through Eastern Europe, making our way from the Black Sea to Amsterdam. I was taken aback by the devastation in human lives caused by the failure of the “great social experiment,” that created societies whose wealth was shared but only among those at the top. So great buildings were erected for the personal aggrandizement of the elite while sacrificing the welfare of the people who were desperate for food and who desired a modicum of personal enrichment. On the other hand, I was impressed with the number of churches and cathedrals that were reopened after decades of being forced to close. These were flourishing, and while they served as much to support tourism as worship, they were a major presence.
Looking at the beautiful classical paintings and art in these churches, made me wonder what it was that inspired the artists to create poetic images and visual metaphors depicting the “mysteries” of Christianity. It occurred to me that their art was conveyed in a language all its own and derived its source from spiritual inspiration and not the intellect or prescribed religious interpretation, and while the cynic might deride the image of the Angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, the artist understood it completely.
Art and music are languages of the soul that bypass our senses and speak to us at a level, in a place we cannot explain or know but do we really need explanation for something we feel "way down deep?"
When we allow God’s love to break through our consciousness as we contemplate the Mysteries of the Annunciation and Virgin birth, do we 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 being? We cannot ask it to explain what it cannot.
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