Life is a mystery. Life is also not a mystery. Properly speaking, a mystery is a truth inaccessible to human reason apart from divine revelation. Classic examples include the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. There would be no way for us to know that the one God is a Trinity of three persons, or that Jesus is God, unless God himself told us and gave us the faith to believe it. 

In this strict sense of the word, life is not a mystery. We are perfectly capable of knowing that we are alive without the aid of extraordinary divine intervention. We are perfectly capable of knowing the world around us simply using the light of human reason.There is, however, a looser sense in which we can speak of life as a mystery. While we know that many things are the case by human reason alone, we do not know why any of them should be the way they are, or why they should be at all. We know that we are alive, that our lives have taken the shape they have, that our lives are filled with some people rather than other people (with whom we might rather live), but we do not know why.

If we rely on human reason alone, it can be very tempting to think that this is all just random, meaningless chance. Only by faith can we know there is meaning to it all, a meaning we do not see now, and may never see in this life. Even though God’s providential ordering of our lives and the lives of others is unfolding right before our eyes, it is a mystery that we do not comprehend. By faith we see the outlines of a plan, but we will only see the full picture in the light of heaven. By faith we see that meaning is there, but rarely can we quite make out what it looks like.

Saint Edith Stein understood this truth well. She said, “Looking at things from God’s viewpoint there is no such thing as chance; my whole life, down to the last detail, is traced in the plan of divine Providence and, to the all-seeing eyes of God, constitutes a perfectly intelligible whole. Thus I am beginning to rejoice at the prospect of the light of glory, where this fully significant context will also be opened up for me” (Finite and Eternal Being, 113). Saint Edith Stein, pray for us, that we too might rejoice at the prospect of the light of glory, where the mystery of our lives will finally be revealed.

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Image: Paul Gauguin, The Road Up