We can read Scripture and grow in our understanding and our living relationship with its messages, but we will always remain somewhat mystified by it because Scripture contains information and insights that are revealed to us. They are not of our own human creation.

We can become more familiar with Scripture as we deepen our reading of it. We might develop convictions of knowing it, but we are reading about things that will always exceed our understanding or explanation.

The Bible is the story of a search and rescue mission performed by our heavenly Father, after we fell into sin, sickness and death by falling for the deceit of the father of lies. From Genesis to Revelation, we are told of the myriads of ways in which God has communicated Himself to humans and guided us gently back into whole union with Him.

The grand story culminates in the Gospels, when God comes in the human and divine person of Jesus to complete the revelation, to offer a mystical structure, and a living body of knowledge that will endure until He comes once again. The Gospels confront us with situations and events that we seem to understand, and perhaps even take for granted, but that are actually unknowable and unexplainable, in simply human terms, and that must be fortified by reasoning and assented to by faith.

We are quite familiar with the story of Jesus rising up out of His grave, yet we do not know how such a thing is possible – because it is only possible for God. On each page of the four gospels, we encounter supernatural occurrences that we can recount yet cannot explain. On our own, we do not know how to dispel a demon, or walk on water, or calm a storm, or raise someone from the dead.

Praying the Glorious Mysteries of the rosary is a dizzying experience for me. The five Glorious Mysteries are the Resurrection, the Ascension of Jesus, the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Assumption of Mary, and the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth.

We might be moved by profound love and gratitude simply by reading the list of those mysteries, yet there is not one that belongs to our human experiences. They each are a revelation of powers beyond our abilities or our grasp.

Praying the Glorious Mysteries involves supernatural vertical movements that cause a lurch in my stomach, like riding a rollercoaster. We are taken on upward and downward spiritual passages between realms we hear about and may partially experience, yet do not comprehend. Do we really know what it is like in the netherworld of death? Can we truly understand what actually occurs when Jesus rises up from that unknown place? These are not natural places or powers.

What actually happened when Jesus somehow changed from seen to unseen, from the natural world back to the supernatural reality from whence He came, at His ascension? Certainly, we cannot explain in natural or human terms what it means that the Holy Spirit of God descended in flames and empowered the apostles with new abilities, providing a mystical ecclesiastical body for us all.

We all pass from dust to dust, but not Mary. She alone was lifted bodily from earth to heaven, and was then crowned as Queen over all.

Each Glorious Mystery involves a sublime movement between natural and supernatural realities that bewilder us and elate us with their promises.

Rising up from the world of death to a new and different state of life!

Rising from this secondary created world to the original and eternal reality!

Descending from heaven to earth and bringing a new share in divine realities to all persons!

Raising our singular and universal mother to a bodily place in the blessed realm of Heaven!

Crowning Mary as the queen of angels and persons!

I sway as I prayerfully encounter these transcendently vertical supernatural experiences of the Glorious Mysteries of the rosary that elude our comprehension, yet which have been gifted to us as a living reality, and an open invitation to participate in them, now and forever.

copyright 2026 Tom Medlar