By Dr. Scott Hahn
’Tis the season! Easter, I mean. And Easter is the season for mystagogy.
I’ve talked about mystagogy (pronounced MIST-a-go-gee) before. In the early Church, newcomers to the faith went through many months of instruction called the “catechumenate.”
This culminates in their baptism at the Easter vigil. Yet what happened after Easter was just as important. That was known as “mystagogy,” which means instruction in the mysteries.
Mystagogy takes us deeper into the divine realities, the truths of Scripture that are “actualized” in the Church’s sacraments. As the Catechism (no. 1075) says: “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.’”
Scripture enables us to see that the visible rites of the Mass and the sacraments bring us into contact with invisible realities—that the human actions of the liturgy release divine power. Scripture helps us know this, and the sacraments empower us to not only live the truths of Scripture but to experience their saving power. Mystagogy shows us that the Mass is nothing less than heaven on earth.
The Church is recovering these ancient traditions of the catechumenate and mystagogy. In turn, this has helped us understand what the early Church always knew—that mystagogy isn’t just for converts. It’s a life’s work of on-going and ever-deepening conversion.
That’s why I’ve said that mystagogy describes all our work here at the St. Paul Center. We encourage the study of Scripture everywhere by everyone—through scholarship, devotional readings, Bible study groups, on-line programs. At the center of all of our programs is mystagogy. We read the Bible from the heart of the Church, and the heart of the Church—its source and summit—is the Church’s sacramental liturgy.
In the Church’s liturgy, the written text of Scripture becomes the living word. The sacraments and the liturgy are the “greater works” that Jesus promised He would empower His apostles to accomplish (John 14:12). As St. Leo the Great famously said: “What was visible in our Savior has passed over into His mysteries” (Catechism, no. 1115).
Mystagogy is the heart of the St. Paul Center. That’s why I was so encouraged to hear Pope Benedict XVI tell a group of seminarians recently: “This seems to me most important: the Liturgy is the privileged place where the Word is alive, is present, indeed, where the Word . . . the Lord, speaks to us and gives himself into our hands.”
Mystagogy is a mission that, like everything in the Church, is ever ancient and ever new. And it’s a mission that we’re proud to share with you. ’Tis the season! He is Risen, indeed!
April 2007
