That’s the line the priest says at Mass after holding up the bread and wine and repeating… or is it declaring, the very words of Jesus at the Last Supper.

“Throw-away-line” to move us on to the next part? Hardly. It’s among the most important pronouncements made at Mass. Combining mystery and faith may sound redundant … but each is the culmination, what makes up, our spiritual lives.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote over eight million words in some on the greatest theologies ever written. (I’m glad I was not chosen to do the counting.) Yet, yet, he never finished his final volume. Years ago I was often told that he said, “It was all for nothing,” as though dismissing his vastly worthy work.

Recently I read that Thomas really said, “Everything I have written is straw.” In the 12th century straw was very important in making hats, roofs, beds, and food for the livestock. Clarifying further, Thomas said, “Everything I have written seems to me as straw in comparison with what I have seen.”

I’ve often said that if a mystery is solved then it was no longer a mystery; meaning that there was no need for faith.

Mystery? Agatha Christi never, ever wrote one, single mystery novel. She wrote novels about puzzles. Puzzles to be uncovered, one piece inserted awkwardly inside another piece insisting that it would fit but it just doesn’t fit. Through further piecing she then cleanly, beautifully placing pieces together assembling a solution.

Thomas tried to puzzle our beautiful faith into a complete puzzle and admitted that this “mystery of our faith” is, indeed, not a puzzle. Thomas attempted too neatly and cleanly to connect the “this’s and thatnesses’” of our lives and narrow them down and reduce them to written words, his written word. Assembled completely, comfortably, and confidently the written word. Would you call that mystery?

Does that solve and resolve the “mystery of your faith?” Is that the summation of our little faith with that stupid dismissive line, “Let go and let God.” Let God to do what? Let God do what and to whom?

There is no mystery in that statement. There is only our “passing the buck.” How can mystery live without our faith? How can our faith survive without its vast mysteries? What would faith even look like without a lot of mystery associated with it? How could those two words ever be said and believed without combing, matching and marrying each other?

I hoped we all honored the Immaculate Conception. Human Mary sinless, doesn’t even die? Mystery/Faith anyone? Advent’s number three is today and the incarnation of God is about to once again appear. Mystery/Fatih anyone? God created and now God will soon walk and travel the very same journey that we all journey.

It’s the straw. It’s not the straw of 12th century, Thomas, but the continuing, growing straw of that empty manger and those empty parts of our lives. No longer the straw of hats and roofs but, for us now, especially, during our trying times, it’s the straws of compassion, mercy, listening, uniting and never dividing.

Growing up, our family hallway room had the stable scene with all the expected characters but with an empty manger – the food-place of food. There’s was no place to place the baby Jesus. The five of us kids were asked to do good deed during these four weeks for someone. If done, we were able to put some straw into that manger to welcome this newborn babe. Boy, did we do our four-week duty. Small children enwrapping ourselves into the mystery of this Godly birth and then living within, throughout our lives, the faith of our lives.

“The Mystery of Faith,” the priest says. Never a mystery to be solved but wonderfully and gloriously a mystery to embrace, hold onto, clasp and caress. Never a faith to be fully known but a faithfully living life full of mystery empowering us to endure.

We all have spiritual/faith questions and doubts about this life and our eternal life. That’s normal and healthy. After the priest says that supposedly “throw-away-line,” here’s what St. Thomas said from an anonymous source, “Hidden things are sought more avidly, and the concealed seems more venerable, and the things long sought are cherished the more.”

Things hidden, sought more avidly. Concealed, even more venerable. Long sought after thing cherished all the more. Just in case you need some Advent words for this season and throughout your lives; clothe yourself and live without your heart and soul “avidly, venerable, and cherished.”

That is the religious mystery that calls for our living faith.

“The Mystery of Faith.”

On behalf of us all, I hope you can’t wait until I sing it.