MYSTERIES are truths we believe in but do not fully understand here on earth but will be clarified when we get to heaven. The first mystery is Three Persons in One God. We believe in only One God but He is manifested to us in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We explain it partially by the triangle which has three sides but only one triangle. If I see your face and someone at your back sees the back of your head, this does not make you two persons. It is the viewer’s inability to see both sides at the same time. We do not see all God’s features. There is only One God and Three Persons in His manifestations to us.

A second mystery is Jesus, the God/man. How can the Creator be at the same time a creature? But we believe Jesus is God and at the same time Man. He claimed so many times and proved it by His miracles but especially by His death and resurrection from the dead. You cannot say that Jesus is only a Prophet and a good Man and not God. If He is not God then He is also not a good Man because He would be telling a lie whenever He claimed He was God as He forgave sins, raised the dead to life, cured the lepers, but especially He predicted that He would be killed and rise again from the dead. This is the Christian belief and they would be the most deluded people if this were not true. (Mohammed never claimed he was God. He claimed to be God’s prophet. At the time of his death he feared God’s judgment on his actions.)

A related mystery is the Eucharist and Mass. If we accept Jesus as God, then we must accept that the bread and wine become God at consecration by a priest because Jesus said so. On His word we adore bread and wine made God. This is Catholic belief unfortunately not shared by all Christians. If we accept Jesus is God and He said that the bread and wine will become His Body and Blood at consecration, then we must take it on His word. If this is not true then we would be adoring a non-God and it would be idolatry. But Catholics, Orthodox, and some Anglican Christians accept this: That the bread and wine become Jesus’ Body and Blood. If we accept that the human body of Jesus is God then this mystery is easy to accept.

There are three or four other mysteries which we will understand only in heaven, among them the mystery of evil and predestination. Where does evil come from? God is good and, therefore, He could not have created evil. We try to explain this by the idea that evil is not something positive. Evil is merely the absence of a good. A table does not have sight as part of its being and, therefore, not being able to see is not an evil for a table. But a child who cannot see or is blind suffers an evil because it is of his nature to be able to see. Therefore, evil is not a positive creation but the absence of a good that should be there. On predestination, the problem is the contradiction between God who is all knowing and God who is all good. If God is all good then how can He allow any one to go to hell? In other words how can a good God create a man who He knows will be damned? Another mystery is man’s freedom to accept or reject God since man receives both his being and freedom from God. In heaven we will know. In the meantime we have faith in the word of God, Jesus.

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