On October 5th and 6th. in Assisi, Italy, there was another edition of «The Atrium of the Gentiles», an initiative of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council of Culture, devoted to the question of God. The President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, and cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Council and famed Biblical exegete, had a thought-provoking dialogue about «God, that unknown».
With «The Atrium of the Gentiles», an effort is being made to initiate dialogues between believers and non-believers. The Atrium was the space around the temple of Jerusalem that was accessible to the gentiles (pagans), who otherwise never could have entered the temple. Now there is an effort to erase all prohibitions, so that all may have access to the temple.
To this end, I engage in a reflection that has been with me my entire life as a theologian: thinking of God beyond the religious objectifications (metaphysics) and trying to interpret God as Mystery, always unknown and simultaneously, always known. Why this path? Einstein gives us a hint: «the one whose eyes are not open to Mystery will go through life seeing nothing».
In effect, wherever we direct our sight, towards the largest and the smallest, outwards and inwardly, to the high and the low, in every direction, we find the Mystery. Mystery is not the unknown; it is the known that fascinates us and impels us to know it more and more. And, at the same time, it causes estrangement and reverence in us. Because it is always there, it constantly offers itself to our knowledge, and when we attempt to know it, we realize that our thirst and hunger to know it is never satisfied. Just as we capture it, it escapes us and heads towards the unknown. We pursue it ceaselessly, and it nonetheless continues being a Mystery in all knowledge, creating in us an endless attraction, fear, and an undeniable reverence. Mystery is.
My basic thesis is this: In the beginning there was Mystery. The Mystery was God. God was the Mystery. God is Mystery for us, and for God.
It is Mystery for us to the extent that we never stop fathoming It, either through reason or intelligence. Each encounter leaves a void that leads us to another encounter. Each knowledge opens another window to a new knowledge. The Mystery of God is not the limit of knowledge, but unlimited knowledge. It is the love that knows no rest. Mystery does not fit into any scheme, nor is it captured by any doctrine. Mystery is always there to be known.
Mystery is an absent Presence. And also a present Absence. Mystery is manifested in our absolute dissatisfaction, that seeks satisfaction, tirelessly and in vain. The human being, tragic and happy, whole but unfinished, is realized in this transit from Presence to Absence.
God is mystery in Itself and to Itself. God is mystery in Itself because the Divine nature is Mystery. Therefore, God as Mystery knows Itself, and still, the Divine self knowledge never ends. God reveals Itself to Itself and retracts from Itself. The knowledge of Its nature as Mystery is ever more whole and plentiful, and, at the same time, always open to a new plenitude, remaining always Mystery, eternal and infinite to God Itself. If it were not so, it would not be what It is: Mystery. Thus, it is a boundless, absolute, Dynamism.
God is Mystery to Itself, this is, no matter how much God knows Itself, Its self knowledge is never exhausted. God is open to a future that is truly a future. Consequently, God is open to something that has not happened yet, but that could happen and be new to God Itself. With the incarnation, God began to be that which God was not before. Thus, there is in God a process of evolution, a self making.
But the Mystery, through an intrinsic dynamism, permanently reveals and self communicates. It goes out of Itself and knows and loves the new that is manifested through Itself. What will be revealed is not a reproduction, but is always different and new, also to God. Contrary to an enigma, that once known, disappears, the more Mystery is known, the more It appears as unknown, this is to say, as Mystery, that invites more knowledge and more love.
To say God-Mystery is to express a dynamism without residue, a life without entropy, an appearance without loss, an evolving without interruption, an eternal coming to be that is always being, and a beauty that is always new and different, and that never withers away. Mystery is Mystery, now and always, from all eternity to all eternity.
Words drown before Mystery, images weaken and references die. What behooves us is silence, reverence, adoration and contemplation. These are the appropriate attitudes before Mystery.
With that understanding, all walls will fall. There will no longer be an Atrium of the Gentiles, nor will there exist a temple, because God does not have a religion. God simply is the Mystery that links and re-links every thing, every person, and the entire universe. Mystery penetrates us and we are submerged in Mystery.
