We call them mysteries because that’s what they are. The Greek word is mysterion, and it means something hidden that God reveals, not a puzzle you solve, but a reality that stays deeper than you can fully grasp even when you’re standing right in the middle of it.
The word “sacrament” comes from Latin, sacramentum, which originally meant a soldier’s oath or a legal bond. It’s not wrong exactly. But it carries baggage from Western medieval theology that tries to explain too much, to pin down exactly how grace works like you’re describing a chemical reaction. The Latin mind wanted to define and categorize. That’s how you end up with scholastic debates about the precise mechanics of transubstantiation.
We kept the Greek word on purpose.
When you’re baptized, something happens that you can’t see. You go under the water three times and come up a new creation, united to Christ’s death and resurrection. That’s real. But try to explain exactly how it works and you’ll run out of words pretty quick. When you receive the Eucharist, you’re receiving Christ’s actual Body and Blood. Not a symbol, not a memorial, Him. The priest says “The servant of God receives…” and you commune. It’s the most concrete thing we do, bread and wine on your tongue, and it’s also the most incomprehensible. God in your mouth. How does that work? It’s a mystery.
St. Paul used mysterion all through his letters. He talked about the mystery hidden for ages but now revealed in Christ. The mystery of the gospel. The mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory. He wasn’t being vague or mystical in the fuzzy sense. He meant that God had disclosed something real that was previously hidden, but even disclosed it remains bigger than our understanding.
The root of mysterion is the verb myo, which means to close your eyes. Not because you’re shutting something out, but because you’re standing before something so bright you can’t take it all in. You close your eyes before the burning bush. That’s the posture we take before the mysteries, not ignorance, but humility before something that exceeds us.
Here’s what I’ve noticed with folks coming from Baptist or Bible church backgrounds around Beaumont. They’re used to everything being explained. The pastor preaches for forty minutes breaking down the Greek and Hebrew, showing you exactly what everything means, making it all clear and applicable. That’s not bad, we love Scripture and we study it seriously. But there’s a risk of thinking that if you can’t explain it, it’s not real. Or worse, that once you’ve explained it, you’ve mastered it.
Orthodoxy doesn’t work that way. We can tell you what happens in baptism, you die with Christ and rise with Him, you’re united to His Body the Church, you receive the Holy Spirit, your sins are washed away. All true. But we can’t tell you how water and words and the invocation of the Trinity accomplish this. It’s a mystery. You participate in it. You experience it. You live from it. But you don’t master it.
The Western church eventually settled on seven sacraments and tried to define exactly what made something a sacrament versus something else. We recognize seven major mysteries too, Baptism, Chrismation, Eucharist, Confession, Unction, Marriage, and Ordination. But we don’t get too fussy about the number. The whole liturgy is mystical. Blessing water is a mystery. A funeral is a mystery. The Church herself is a mystery, St. Paul says. We’re less interested in drawing sharp boundaries than in recognizing that God meets us through physical things in ways that go deeper than the physical.
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware writes about this in The Orthodox Church, and he points out that mysteries aren’t magic. They require faith. They require the Church. They’re not mechanical, you don’t just perform the right ritual and get an automatic result. But they’re also not dependent on your feelings or the worthiness of the priest. They work because Christ works through them, and that’s mystery enough.
When you come to St. Michael’s and see the priest cense the icons, hear the deacon chant the litanies, watch the gifts being prepared at the altar, you’re entering into mystery. Not vagueness. Not confusion. But reality that’s more real than what you can measure, touching the eternal in the middle of a Sunday morning in Southeast Texas. We call them mysteries because we’re honest about what we’re doing. We’re not just remembering or symbolizing. We’re participating in something God is doing, right now, that connects earth to heaven. And that’s too big for any other word.
