Creating an Effective Mystagogy

Following is an excerpt from Creating an Effective Mystagogy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Resource Publications, Inc.

Preface

When I started the search for an effective mystagogy, I thought I already knew where it would lead. I
imagined a final chapter with an outline of a process that one could use for catechetical sessions during
the period of postbaptismal catechesis or mystagogy. I thought that mystagogy was the period of
postbaptismal catechesis. I believed that by interviewing a number of neophytes and their mystagogues,
I would confirm what I already believed from my own experience as a mystagogue. I was wrong. The
search took me in directions I never would have imagined.

I had also believed that I could learn little from a group of fourth-century bishops whose world was very
different from the world we live in today. Again, I was wrong. The more I read of the preaching of Cyril
of Jerusalem, Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, the more turns I took
on my search for an effective mystagogy. In the beginning I never imagined that I would actually have
wanted to read all the mystagogical homilies of these men, let alone their catechetical preaching. They
led me to places in my own spiritual life I am grateful to have gone. I was surprised on several occasions
when I chose to quote these great preachers in my own preaching during Lent and Eastertime.

I was surprised also by the conclusions at which I arrived. In the beginning I never would have guessed
how significant the role of the preacher would become. Nor would I have thought that the Constitution
on the Sacred Liturgy’s statement on the real presence of Christ in the assembly gathered, in the word
proclaimed, in the rituals celebrated, and in the ministers ministering would become such a significant
foundation for developing an effective mystagogy and an authentic initiation experience. I never would
have suspected that the distinction between postbaptismal catechesis and mystagogy would also have
become so significant to the search for an effective mystagogy.

Introduction

Focusing on Mystagogy

Liturgical catechesis aims to initiate people into the mystery of Christ (It is “mystagogy.”) by proceeding
from the visible to the invisible, from the sign to the thing signified, from the “sacraments” to the
“mysteries” (CCC 1075).1

When I began to write this book, my goal was to help parishes design processes that enable people,
especially neophytes, to experience the mystery of Christ and to reflect on and to live out of that
experience throughout their lives. More specifically, it was to examine what was happening in
mystagogy,2 so that the gift to the church that is mystagogy might be used more effectively for the sake
of the reign of God.

My experience of mystagogy, the experience of the fourth-century mystagogues, and the experience of
mystagogues and neophytes in the United States today will be the starting point for this exploration.

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My Experience with Mystagogy

I first encountered mystagogy while attending the Beginnings and Beyond Institute sponsored by the
North American Forum on the Catechumenate.3 Until then, mystagogia, as it was called in 1984, was a
complete mystery to me. While I had been a catechist and parish director of Christian initiation of adults
for several years, I had no idea what to do during the period of postbaptismal catechesis. I had read the
introductions in the Rite of the Christian Initiation of Adults,4 but I had no experience or understanding
of what it was all about.

One of the presenters at that institute, Ron Oakham, introduced the participants to what he called ritual
catechesis,5 a method for reflecting on a ritual experience. Together we both practiced and discussed
that method. We also considered its implications for mystagogia. My experience of ritual catechesis and
the subsequent discussions among those of us on the Beyond track during that institute had a profound
influence on my future ministry as a mystagogue. That catechetical method became the method I used
both in celebrating mystagogy in the two parishes where I subsequently ministered as a mystagogue and
in teaching adults about sacraments in other catechetical situations.

During the following Easter season, several other mystagogues and I used the ritual catechesis method
we had learned the previous summer in a small town just outside a major metropolitan area. There
were about twelve hundred families, 90 percent of whom were first- or second-generation Americans of
Eastern European descent. The town itself was over 90 percent Catholic with six Catholic parishes for
some four thousand people. The town was dominated by three companies, all of which had moved their
corporate headquarters into the nearby city during the previous two decades. It was a rather stable
community. Although many children moved away as adults, few new families moved into the
community. With so few people in the town who were not already baptized Roman Catholics, it was
considered rare that anyone would seek initiation into the Catholic Church as an adult. But in the late
summer of 1983, my second year as an associate pastor, each of the three full-time priests on the staff
had encountered two or three persons who expressed an interest in becoming Catholic, and so we
formed an initiation team and used the ritual and catechetical processes described in the Rite of
Christian Initiation of Adults.

The following year, two members of the initiation team attended the Beginnings and Beyond Institute.
During the Easter season of 1985, I experienced mystagogy for the first time.

Susan had been baptized just two days earlier, and she was crying.6 The neophytes, their sponsors and
spouses, and the members of the parish initiation team had gathered to remember, to reflect, and to
rejoice. We had gathered around the waters of the font, the waters in which Susan and three others had
been baptized. We had listened again to the Easter story of resurrection. We had blessed ourselves
(some of us, like Susan, for the first time) with the water blessed two nights earlier by the light of the
Easter candle. We had prayed for one another and joined our prayers together with the prayer that
Jesus taught us. When we had gathered in the living room of the parish pastoral center, Susan began
crying.

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As mystagogue for that evening gathering of postbaptismal catechesis, I invited those who were
gathered together to remember not only what we had just celebrated, but also what we had
experienced a couple of days earlier at the Easter Vigil. Then I invited those who wanted to share their
experience to do so.

Susan then told us this story:

“I had a hard time sleeping last Friday night. It had been a long day. But in the morning, Holy Saturday
morning, I woke up filled with all kinds of strange feelings. For some reason, I knew that what had
happened to Jesus was about to happen to me. By the time the day was over, I would be dead. I was not
sick, but I was certainly dying.

“There were so many people to talk to. If this was to be the last day of my life, there were so many
people to talk to. I talked to my children. I told them I loved them. I asked them if they could forgive me
for the times I had let them down, for the times I had been less of a mother than I could have—should
have—been.

“I called my ex-husbands—all three of them. I doubt if they understood what I was doing. But I made
peace with each of them in my own way. I asked for their forgiveness for the many ways in which I had
hurt them during our marriages, and I offered them my forgiveness. I needed to be reconciled with each
of them before I died.

“I called my parents, my brothers and sisters, even my ex-in-laws. I thanked them all for the ways in
which they had supported and loved me over the years. They must have thought I was crazy, calling
them for no apparent reason and offering them my love and asking for their forgiveness.

“But I was dying, and I knew I’d be dead before the day was over.

“And then we gathered in church to pray and to prepare ourselves for the Easter Vigil; it was like making
my own funeral arrangements. You were all so excited about what was about to happen, and so was I.
But I knew that I was about to die and that made my excitement and anxiety just a little different.

“And then, during the Easter Vigil, when you poured that water over my head, then I died ... I died.”

When she finished her story, many in the group were in tears. After a brief period of silence, I shared the
following Scripture passage with the neophytes and their sponsors:

“Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were
indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by
the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.

“For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in
the resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be
done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. For a dead person has been absolved from
sin. If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ,

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raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him. As to his death, he died to sin
once and for all; as to his life, he lives for God. Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as [being]
dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:3–11).”

This was the same Scripture passage we had heard at the Easter Vigil, the epistle for that evening. But in
this context, on this night, it came to life in a new way. Connections were made. The tradition was
shared. The starting point for these connections and sharing was Susan’s experience.

This reading also reminded Eleanor, another neophyte, of another recent experience. A few weeks
earlier, George, one of the candidates for full communion, had a massive heart attack. All the
catechumens, candidates, sponsors, and catechists from our community had visited him in the hospital
and prayed with him sometime during the following week. Some had witnessed his profession of faith,
confirmation, and first communion. Some were present as he was anointed with the oil of the sick. By
the end of that week, George died. All gathered at the wake and again at his funeral the day after they

Remembering that event, Eleanor, the other neophytes, and those who gathered with them began to
make connections between the symbols of water poured over those who were baptized just a few days
earlier and the water splashed on George’s casket just a few weeks earlier; the paschal candle that
stood before those reborn to eternal life at the Easter Vigil and a similar candle that stood as a silent
sentinel at George’s funeral;8 the white garments that wrapped the newly baptized and the white cloth
laid on the casket of our friend. All these symbols spoke of the relationship between life and death, a
relationship celebrated in baptism and in the Order of Christian Funerals. The words from Paul’s Letter
to the Romans, quoted above, which had been proclaimed at George’s funeral, were also proclaimed at
Susan’s and Eleanor’s baptism, just as the story of the resurrection of Lazarus was heard at both the
third scrutiny and George’s funeral. We remembered. We made connections. We experienced once
again the presence of God in our midst. There were new understandings and new insights into the faith
into which the neophytes had just recently been baptized, understandings and insights that would have
been impossible prior to the experience.

That experience of mystagogy convinced me of its importance. It had an effect, not only on my way of
thinking about mystagogy but also on my behaviors as a mystagogue, preacher, and presider at the rites
of the Roman Catholic Church. It likewise was effective in that the neophytes who were part of the
experience began to see the connections between their lives, liturgy, and the Christian tradition. This
was my first real experience of mystagogy during the Christian initiation of adults,9 and it is out of that
experience that I come to this study.

I have experienced mystagogy many times since then. I have been both mystagogue and member of the
Christian faithful. I have witnessed, rejoiced, and made connections in my own life as part of the
mystagogical process. I have been blessed, and it is the blessings that I have received and the blessings I
have shared with neophytes and other members of the Christian faithful that have convinced me of the
importance of mystagogy and postbaptismal catechesis.

Like the Rite’s authors, I have come to believe that “the period of postbaptismal catechesis is of great
significance for both the neophytes and the rest of the faithful. (RCIA 246).”10 I gained new
understandings, new insights, and a deeper faith in God. The paschal mystery was opened up for me in

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new ways. The call to witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ was reinforced and
reenergized.

The Experience of Mystagogy in the Church in the United States of America

In 1988, Liturgy Training Publications conducted a survey of catechists and parish directors of the
Christian initiation of adults. While those who answered the survey were not statistically
representational of the Catholic population in the United States, they do seem to form a kind of cross
section of the American church. The most common responses to two different questions11 indicated
that of the RCIA stages or rites [mystagogy] seems most difficult to understand [and] most difficult to do
(O’Brien 9). In the workshops that I have conducted in three different dioceses over the past twelve
years, the participants seemed to support the survey results. Time and time again, I was asked to share
resources and information that might enable catechists and parish directors of Christian initiation to
both understand the goals of mystagogy and to help them plan for the postbaptismal catechesis that
takes place during this stage of the initiation process.

James Dunning summed up the situation in this way:

“We have no hard data, but we do have anecdotal evidence that some neophytes not only become
passive but totally inactive regarding Sunday worship. Some suggest that this is not so much a matter of
deliberate choice but of drifting away from active participation because the church has drifted away
from them. The church that they experienced during initiation—a church of small groups round the
scriptures sharing faith—in effect no longer exists for them” (“Demystifying Mystagogy” 32).

When I suggested to Dunning that perhaps as many as 50 percent of those initiated at the Easter Vigil
cease to participate in the liturgical life of the Church within two years of their initiation, he responded
by calling me “an optimist.” He indicated that from the feedback he received while conducting institutes
and giving presentations at various conferences, many people he talked to thought the number would
be larger and take place sooner. This may be an indication that something is awry. While many
neophytes consider their experience of the Christian initiation of adults to be positive, its effects may
not be long lasting, or at the very least, some of the expected behavioral results (for example, regular,
active participation in the liturgical life of the parish community) are not in evidence.

Though anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that more and more parish initiation teams are doing
something they call postbaptismal catechesis or mystagogy, the vast majority of parishes in the United
States do not appear to be doing anything during or beyond the Easter season that they would call
mystagogy. Some of this may indicate a misunderstanding of the term itself. The Rite indicates that the
“main setting *for mystagogy+ is the so-called Masses for neophytes, that is, the Sunday Masses of the
Easter Season” (RCIA 247). Most ministers of initiation, including the United States bishops, seem to
believe that additional gatherings ought to be part of the Easter season and “should extend until the
anniversary of Christian initiation, with at least monthly assemblies of the neophytes for their deeper
Christian formation and incorporation into the full life of the Christian community” (National Statutes
for the Catechumenate 24). What these assemblies look like remains unclear. To many ministers of
initiation, the Rite seems to imply that some kind of catechetical gatherings ought to take place when it
also calls mystagogy “the period of postbaptismal catechesis.”

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In the last few years, several published resources have been made available to assist parishes in doing
postbaptismal catechesis.12 The very existence of these resources seems to indicate that many people
believe that mystagogy ought to include more than the Sunday Eucharistic celebration.

Critical Reflection on the Present Situation

The Rite seems to be at least partially to blame for the inaction and the confusion that is occurring.
Whereas the introduction regarding the other stages of Christian initiation are much more clear about
what happens during those periods, those concerning mystagogy are rather sparse. While the 1988
edition contains almost three times as much text as the provisional text regarding mystagogy, the
instructions are still rather vague.13

The period of the catechumenate and the period of purification and enlightenment include numerous
rituals.14 The only rituals during the period of postbaptismal catechesis or mystagogy are the Sunday
Eucharists during the Easter season and a Mass with the bishop. In many parishes, the neophytes have
no distinct role in the Sunday Eucharist during the Easter season. Following the intense rituals of Lent
and the Triduum, this can be experienced as a ritual letdown.

The academic calendar often has more influence on parish life than the liturgical calendar does. Thus, in
many parishes there is a tendency to use both the language and structures of academia in the process of
Christian initiation. A number of resources, especially those published immediately after the
introduction of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, provide a detailed curriculum that can easily give
one the impression that the Christian initiation of adults is primarily an educational program.15
Together with a tendency to see baptism as the goal of initiation, the Easter Vigil can be thought of as a
graduation. This kind of understanding can lead one to believe that mystagogy is totally unnecessary,
about as important to one’s overall education as a class reunion.

J. Michael McMahon reminds us that “neither the sacraments of initiation nor their preparation are
ends in themselves. They allow believers to enter into a new life, as they are joined to Christ and share
with others who have also responded to the proclamation of the good news” (85). Until catechists and
others in leadership in the Church believe that “the initiation journey never really comes to an end”
(McMahon 89), mystagogy will be considered unimportant because the initiation process will have
already ended with the reception of the Easter sacraments.

Catechesis, preaching, and ritual celebrations can sometimes focus too narrowly on personal salvation.
They can also proclaim a kind of magical understanding of sacraments. These misunderstandings of the
tradition can also lead to a notion that salvation is complete once one has been fully initiated. Once
complete, there is no need for “deepening the Christian experience, for spiritual growth and for entering
more fully into the life and unity of the community” (RCIA 7.4), and thus mystagogy becomes
unnecessary.

How particular communities celebrate the early stages of the initiation process can make it difficult to
celebrate an effective mystagogy. The signing of the senses during the rite of acceptance into the order
of catechumens is often celebrated as if this is simply a ritual blessing. The paradoxical power of the
cross as a symbol of both death and life, both blessing and curse is diminished, and the catechumen’s

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experience of the paschal mystery is minimized. The scrutinies are often celebrated as blessings of the
Elect (Paris) rather than exorcisms that “uncover, then heal all that is weak, defective, or sinful in the
hearts of the Elect” as well as “bring out, then strengthen all that is upright, strong and good” (RCIA
141). A small amount of water poured over the forehead of the Elect can minimize any sense that
baptism involves “dying with Christ.” When the power of the ritual is not experienced in its fullness, it
can prevent, or at least make it difficult for, the neophytes to experience that they have been immersed
into the paschal mystery of Christ’s dying and rising. When ritual signs are minimized, when the paschal
character (RCIA 8) of the process is not evidenced, the mystery that mystagogy reflects on may seem
absent, thus making reflection on the mystery almost impossible.

The ways in which the previous periods of Christian initiation are celebrated can become obstacles to an
effective mystagogy, obstacles not easily overcome. Mystagogy depends on a period of evangelization
during which a person feels “called away from sin and drawn into the mystery of God’s love” (RCIA 37).
It depends on the period of the catechumenate during which catechumens were led “not only to an
appropriate acquaintance with dogmas and precepts but also to a profound sense of the mystery of
salvation in which they desire to participate” (RCIA 75.1). It depends on rituals that are real celebrations
of God’s presence in the world and in the lives of all who believe. It depends on symbols that are lavish
and gestures that are strong signs of God’s action in our lives. Mystagogy cannot make up for what is
lacking in the earlier periods of Christian initiation.

Mystagogy is the last thing to come and the first thing to fall apart, not just because we are tired, but
because, in all honesty, we don’t know what to do with it, and the trivia we fill it with invites boredom.
Have we, in the last analysis, brought these people through nine months, a year, two years or more of
intense preparation for entrance into a life about which we have nothing to say? ... a life with which we
are bored, or about which we are so ignorant or have so little experience that we have nothing to share?
(Hixon 128).

The truth is often that we don’t have enough experience of the renewed liturgy or ecclesiology of
Vatican II to know what to say to neophytes. Members of the Catholic Church baptized in infancy do not
know what the experience of the neophytes is really like, and our imaginations are limited by our own
experiences or lack of experience of conversion.

On the other hand, some pastoral ministers have had such powerful experiences with the Christian
initiation of adults that they believe that it can solve all the problems of the parish. They put all their
eggs in this one basket. The Christian initiation of adults is not a renewal program for the parish. It is a
ritual process that often engages the faithful in new ways of being a parish, but that is not its primary
goal. Those who use it in this way may be misusing it.

Small faith communities are often formed during the initiation process. Catechumens, sponsors, and
catechists form strong personal relationships that often disappear shortly after initiation.

Of all the stages in the RCIA, the mystagogical period perhaps calls for the most change in pastoral
practice. If we spend the other periods initiating people into a community of celebration and ministry,
that community must stay with them during the Easter season to help them reflect on what has
happened and to help them make decisions for the future.

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Even more, I would take the stance that so many values in secularized America conflict with Gospel
values that to continue to grow in faith the newly baptized need to have some regular contact with a
small prayer community which will also provide support. (Dunning, “The Stages of Initiation,” 242).

Once initiated into the larger Church, the neophyte is often abandoned by both sponsors/godparents
and catechists, who have the mistaken impression that once a person is initiated they no longer need
the support that was part of their preparation for initiation. It may in fact be that they need the support
of the community even more, and that may be why so many neophytes leave the community they have
spent so much time preparing to join.

CREATING AN EFFECTIVE MYSTAGOGY