The Mystery of God–Exploring the Unfathomable Depths of the Divine

Sunday, January 5, 2025: The Mystery of God

This week we will be exploring that which goes beyond understanding. Modern religion often presents God dogmatically in a box: Here he is. This is what he is like. This is what he expects of you. This is what you need to believe, because THIS is the truth. The problem with that is, as St. Augustine said, “If you comprehend it, it is not God.”

What we think or believe about God is influenced by so many factors-our family, our culture, the media, the church or religion we grew up in or didn’t, our community and friends, teachers, what we read and our own experiences

Even the Bible paints more than one picture of God. As St. Paul wrote, “we seen now through a glass dimly.” The author of much of the New Testament admits ambiguity! So we have muddled images of God, even from scriptures. It becomes even murkier when viewed through our personal lens. It is sort of like looking up at the clouds. I see the shape of a lamb and you see a roaring Lion. It is the same cloud, but our perceptions differ.

One of my favorite mystics and theologians is Maximus the Confessor, who lived from 580 to 662. He was tortured and exiled for his beliefs by the church, but was later vindicated as a saint. He wrote extensively on the mystery of God. Here is a sampling of his thoughts:

God is infinite and incomprehensible, and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility.” (Ambigua to John, 10)

“He who has reached knowledge in the true sense and has been deemed worthy to dwell with God will no longer speak of God or see Him in terms of objects, but will contemplate Him beyond all objects and language.” (Chapters on Knowledge, 2.36)

“The entire cosmos participates in the mystery of God, who remains hidden and yet revealed in all things. Each creature speaks of God’s beauty, yet His essence is beyond all.” (Mystagogy, 1.6)

As you meditate on the Mystery of God this week, become Aware of your own preconceptions and assumptions about God. Wonder about God and the mysteries we cannot explain. Enjoy the Experience, Engage with the Ideas. Be willing to live in the question and with uncertainty. Be in AWE.

Monday, January 6, 2025: The Infinite Beyond Understanding

• St. Augustine: “If you comprehend it, it is not God.” (Sermon 117 on the Gospel of John)
• Thomas Aquinas: “The divine essence itself surpasses all the perfection that any intellect of a creature can grasp.” (Summa Theologica, Part 1, Question 12, Article 7)
• Gregory of Nyssa: “The divine nature is not to be grasped by the mind or comprehended by any word.” (The Life of Moses)
• Dionysius the Areopagite: “We pray that we may come to this darkness, beyond light, and, without seeing and without knowing, to see and to know what lies beyond vision and knowledge.” (The Mystical Theology, Chapter 5)
• Job 11:7-9: “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens above—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths below—what can you know?” (NIV)

Question to Ponder:How does the incomprehensibility of God inspire reverence in your soul?

Action to Take: Write down three ways in which God’s mystery has influenced your faith journey.

Tuesday, January 7,2025: God Hidden in All Things

• Hildegard of Bingen: “God is the mystery that moves through all things and transcends them.” (Scivias)
• Julian of Norwich: “God is the unseeable, unknowable, and unreachable source of all that exists.” (Revelations of Divine Love)
• Nicholas of Cusa: “The nature of God lies beyond the grasp of human reason.” (De Docta Ignorantia)
• Rabindranath Tagore: “The infinite is not far from the finite; it is within it, ever elusive, ever revealing.” (Gitanjali, Poem 36)
• Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

Question to Ponder: How do you see God hidden in creation?

Action to Take: Spend time observing nature today, contemplating how God reveals Himself through creation.

Wednesday, January 8, 2025: God Beyond Description

• Plotinus: “The One is beyond all thought, all description, and all knowing.” (The Enneads)
• Blaise Pascal: “The greatest of things are those whose essence is hidden.” (Pensées, Section 194)
• St. John Chrysostom:“What mind can comprehend the infinite and ineffable God?” (Homilies on the Gospel of John)
• Simone Weil: “God can only be present in creation as absence, as a space for the other.” (Gravity and Grace)
• Romans 11:33: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

Question to Ponder: What does it mean for God to be beyond human language?

Action to Take: Reflect on the limits of your understanding and offer a prayer of surrender to God’s infinite wisdom.

Karl Barth: “God reveals Himself in mystery and conceals Himself in the revelation.” (Church Dogmatics)

• Maximus the Confessor: “The entire cosmos participates in the mystery of God, who remains hidden and yet revealed in all things.” (Mystagogy, 1.6)
• Teresa of Ávila: “He dwells in the interior castle, a mystery beyond the understanding of the soul.” (Interior Castle)
• Bhagavad Gita 9:16-19: “I am the ritual and the sacrifice; I am the offering and the herbs. I am the chant and the sacred word; I am the butter and the fire and the offering it consumes.”
• Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Question to Ponder: How does God’s self-revelation lead you to greater humility?

Action to Take: Meditate on the passage that speaks of God’s ways being higher than yours.

• St. Isaac the Syrian: “Silence is the mystery of the age to come; words are the instrument of this world.” (Ascetical Homilies)
• Søren Kierkegaard: “God is that which is infinite and not to be comprehended.” (Philosophical Fragments)
• Albert Einstein: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” (The World as I See It)
• Tao Te Ching 1: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.”
• 1 Corinthians 2:9: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived—the things God has prepared for those who love him.”

Question to Ponder: What role does mystery play in your relationship with God?

Action to Take: Write a prayer expressing awe at the mystery of God.

• Job 11:7-9: “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens above—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths below—what can you know?” (NIV)
• Hildegard of Bingen: “God is the mystery that moves through all things and transcends them.” (Scivias)
• St. John Chrysostom: “What mind can comprehend the infinite and ineffable God?” (Homilies on the Gospel of John)
• Maximus the Confessor: “The entire cosmos participates in the mystery of God, who remains hidden and yet revealed in all things.” (Mystagogy, 1.6)
• Tao Te Ching 1: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.”

Question to Ponder: How does the mystery of God engender AWE in your life?

Action to Take: Take a few minutes outside observing and wondering about the awesomeness of God and creation.