Discovering Others

Last year,I gave a presentation to our student SJCNC leaders on holistic spiritual development, and due to time restraints was forced to truncate a concept that I ended up reducing to mumblings of something of little consequence. What makes this so unfortunate is the reality that the subject is at the heart of our understanding of ourselves and our relationship with others. What I had intended to communicate and managed to do quite poorly was a reflection on the human person as a kind of mystery. Certainly, if the human person is the image of God, who is in His very being the definition of mystery, then the human person is a reflection of that Supreme mystery and a kind of mystery in miniature. As St, Basil Stated in the 4th century, “do not despise the wonder that is in you. For you are small in your own reckoning, but the Word will disclose that you are great…from this small work of construction, I understand the great Fashioner.” (Discourse 1 on the Origin of Humanity, n.2)


Nevertheless, we do not act as if we were aware of this. Others are seldom perceived as unique mysteries to be discovered, when in reality each individual possesses a depth of meaning that could not be plumbed in ten lifetimes. Every other should be seen as a tiny mystery of their own, a small glimpse into God’s own mystery, and a unique treasury of unexplored purpose and life. We should be fascinated with every other person we meet, for every other person is a trove of discovery and significance. There is a profundity to every person that ought to captivate us in awe and invigorate us to delve into a passionate investigation of the mystery of the other. However, what is more common to the human experience is to arbitrarily draw lines of completion, barriers of which we have superficially determined we need not tread beyond in the search of the mystery of the other. Often these are drawn to defend ourselves from hurt and misunderstanding, drawn after retreating from such an incident to the mystery of one person with which we feel most comfortable – ourselves.

Our mystery becomes the most real and the most significant, and we slowly lose sight of the mystery of the other vanishing in the distance we have created. An even deeper travesty, and probably a more widespread one, is when the “other” whose mystery we hold aloof is God. Almost more easily than forgetting the immensity of the mystery of every human person do we forget the magnitude of the mystery of God, arbitrarily determining we have completed our journey into the deep canons of Divine mystery when we have barely stepped into the mouth of the cave. In both occasions what eludes us in the understanding that there will always be more to discover in relation to another person, for persons are vast, mysterious, and irreducible. I have known four sets of twins in my lifetime, and despite their similarities it is their distinctions with which I marvel, for each does not stand as a replica of the other but as a unique mystery of their own. May we never lose sight of the marvelousness of the mystery of every person and never tire of investing ourselves in a fuller discovery of that mystery, whether human or Divine.