Something Other

Some things are only known by the Father.

"From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.  So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.  Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.  "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.  It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.  Therefore, keep awake-for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn,  or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all:Keep awake." - Mark 13:28-37

What Jesus says about the father knowing something he does not know can be troubling, since they are both persons of the same God, as we understand the Trinity.  But it also may be a hint at how Jesus could be both fully divine and fully human.

Richard Rohr gives us a picture of Jesus as both, and as such something different than either a fully divine or a fully human entity.  We have a hard time understanding that concept, because it seems to be self-contradictory. 

But Jesus explains that there are things he, in his Human existence, don't know, even though God knows them.  In that sense, Jesus is like us.  We cannot know God fully, the way God wants us to know Him, and yet we know that on some level, Jesus does know Him that way.

So, Jesus is something other, a combination of contradictions, and can be just as human as we are while being just as divine as God.  And that is the mystery we can only reconcile through faith.

If it was easy, everyone would believe it to be true, but reason and human knowledge hold it out as something wrong or in conflict.

So, we must go somewhere else in our mind, heart and soul to understand, or at ;east accept what we don't understand.  And that is faith.

More to come...