The Humorous Mysteries

VATICAN CITY- The unpublished notes of John Paul II reveal that he was planning to announce yet another set of Mysteries for the Rosary this year, just a few years on the heels of the groundbreaking Luminous Mysteries introduced in 2002. The Humorous Mysteries (Mysteria Iocorum) are a meditation on that most elusive and sadly neglected facet of the character of Our Lord: His sense of humor. It is often said of God that He must possess a sense of humor- did He not create the platypus? -yet we often overlook this in considering the character of Jesus (concerned, poor sinners that we are, by more pressing matters such as His justice and mercy). The Humorous Mysteries, devoutly contemplated, should bring the faithful to a deeper understanding of what G.K. Chesterton was getting at when he wrote:

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume [Orthodoxy] I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

The first Humorous Mystery is the Petrine Pun.

When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" They replied, "some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter said in reply, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Then he strictly ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Messiah. (Mk 16:13-20)

In Aramaic, of course, the words for Peter and for rock are one and the same: kepha. Our Lord's sense of humor is apparent not only in his play on words, but in his paradoxical choice of Peter, who will later deny Him three times, as the foundation of his Church against which the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail.

When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its comer-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob a coward--in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link. (G.K. Chesterton, Heretics)

The final punchline, of course, is the literal fulfillment of Christ's promise; excavations beneath St. Peter's basilica have discovered what is very likely the tomb and mortal remains of the Apostle himself, Pope St. Peter. "On this rock..."

To be continued...