ISTANBUL, TURKEY - OCTOBER 31: The Anastasis fresco in the parecclesion of the Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora (Kariye Camii) on October 31, 2015 in Istanbul,Turkey.
By Jason Heron, OblSB
When you hear the word “mystery,” you might think of the most recent detective show you watched or the popular “Knives Out” franchise of murder mystery films. But when Christians use the word “mystery,” they’re talking about a truth you can contemplate forever without exhausting it. There’s no bottom.
Our faith is full of mysteries, but at the heart of all of them are the mysteries of God and the human person. For very different reasons, both of these mysteries can seem totally impenetrable.
On the one hand, God “dwells in inaccessible light” (1 Tim 6:16) far beyond our ability to think or imagine or dream. On the other hand, we dwell in frustrating darkness, muddled and obscure even to ourselves. We may know a lot about ourselves biologically, but we remain confused. Why can’t we live in peace with ourselves and others? Why do we break promises? Why do we speak in half-truths? Why do we act against our own consciences?
You already know these questions from your own experience. The other animals don’t appear to struggle with such questions, but we are obsessed with them. These questions fuel most of our art, literature and music.
The Second Vatican Council addressed all of this quite beautifully in a document called Gaudium et spes. The Church declared: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (22).
This passage helps us understand why, for Christians, Jesus is the heart of the Trinity’s revelation to us.
“The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.”
The incarnate Word is a mystery because humans cannot stop wondering about how the eternal Son of the Father could assume human nature. What’s more, we cannot fathom how the incarnate Word could turn his own murder into our salvation. Every generation of humans, from Jesus’ resurrection to the end of time, will be able to get lost in the bottomless fascination of this person and what he has done for us.
As we contemplate the mystery of his incarnation, we start to see ourselves more clearly.
“For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord.”
The story of Adam and Eve sheds a little bit of light on the mystery of our humanity. Unfortunately, what that story illuminates is that we are arrogant and greedy enough to break promises. And even though our arrogance and greed are destructive, we don’t seem to be able to overcome them by our own power. In fact, we seem addicted to them. Some of us even grow to love our own arrogance and greed. We can even convince ourselves that they are virtues. It’s a real mess.
So, the first Adam can help us a bit: his story and his tendency are our story and tendency. Like a cancer diagnosis, it’s not exactly good news, but it’s information you need.
In the first Adam, we learn to recognize what St. Paul writes about himself in Romans 7: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. […] Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
This is what it’s like to be “in” Adam.
“Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”
Christians are not only “in” Adam, though. Paul writes a lot about being a “new creation.” And he says that we are this new creation “in” Christ. So, the first Adam reveals to me that I am prone to arrogance, greed and deep confusion about my self-destructive tendencies. But the second Adam reveals to me that my wretched state is not my destiny. The Creator has not orphaned me. Rather, the Creator has become a fellow human, a brother and a friend right here with me in my wretchedness.
Some Christians have a tendency to see Jesus as the heart of Christian revelation because they think of Jesus as their ticket to heaven. Believe in Jesus; go to the good place when you die. But God wants to give us more than a ticket to a beautiful afterlife. God wants to recreate us in the image of the eternal Son, full of grace and truth. God wants to liberate us from our arrogance and our greed. We do not have to wait until death for that liberation. Jesus reveals to us that heaven—life in God—begins right here and now.
