Mystagogy

Do you like to travel? I love to travel and do you know what I like best? Looking at the pictures! The pictures of the places and the people help me to remember the trip and point out how the journey amazed me, challenged me and changed me.

Our newly initiated members are spending the Easter season reflecting on their faith journey, in particular, on the celebrations of Holy Week and the experience of the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist. They are remembering the images, the words, and the symbols they experienced. This process of reflection, officially called mystagogy, is a way of helping them to deepen their understanding of their experience. In the ancient Church, it was a way of teaching not only the newly initiated, but the whole community about the mysteries of faith.

Mystagogy isn’t only for the newly initiated. It is a powerful tool for everyone that can help one understand one’s faith in new ways. Take some time in the days ahead to remember the liturgies of Holy Week, Easter, or a Sunday Mass and discuss as a family. Here are a few questions to get you started: What did you see? What did you hear? What word or phrase captured your attention? What do you remember most? What touched you? What did it mean to you? What symbol stood out for you? If that symbol could have spoken, what might it have said? How did the liturgy challenge or affirm your perspective? How did it deepen your faith?

Mystagogy shows us how the liturgy teaches, reinforcing a key concept of the Second Vatican Council.

“Although the liturgy is above all things the worship of the divine majesty, it likewise contains rich instruction for the faithful.” Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy 33

For example, I remember when a visitor to our parish engaged in mystagogy without knowing it. He noticed that we prayed (in the General Intercessions) for those on death row. He was a lawyer who was all too familiar with criminal punishment. He was deeply moved by the prayer. It spoke to him about the abundance of God’s love and motivated him to seek a deeper understanding of our beliefs on capital punishment. His perspective about who Catholics are and what we believe was challenged and changed.

The liturgy teaches us a lot about our faith, but it requires that we come to Mass with eyes and ears wide open, with attentiveness and presence, ready to be amazed, challenged and changed.

I would like to invite you to share your experiences of the liturgies of Holy Week, of Easter or of a recent Sunday Mass by emailing me at kkuczka@sta.org. These comments will then be published in next weekend’s blog. I too will share my experiences of the liturgies of northern Italy. Sharing our experiences can help us to learn from one another and can lead us to a deeper faith in the Risen Lord, which is what mystagogy and Easter is all about.

Sunday

What are your childhood memories of Sunday? Was it a day that began with worship? Was it a time set aside to spend with family and friends? Were there special meals or other family rituals?

Sunday for my family meant going to Mass first thing in the morning. Since my hometown was largely populated by Italians, Sunday was the day we ate pasta. I can still smell the aroma of homemade tomato sauce which filled our house on Sundays. In the afternoon, we would sit out on the front porch or we would “go for a ride” to visit relatives or visit the graves of our loved ones at the cemetery. Then we would stop at McDonalds or go for an ice cream. It was a special day, sacred in fact, because we did things on Sunday we didn’t normally do during the rest of the week.

Whatever your childhood memories of Sunday, chances are that your current experience is different. Times have changed. These days, most people use Sundays to catch up on all the work that didn’t get done the rest of the week. Sundays have become filled with scheduled school and sports activities, leaving little time to observe the special nature of Sunday, as directed in the book of Deuteronomy:

“Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you may labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, your God. No work may be done then, whether by you, or your son or daughter.” (Deuteronomy 5:12-13)

The word for Sabbath in Hebrew is Shabbat, which is a name for God. The Sabbath is a day to praise God for God’s goodness and to make the day holy as God did in creating the Sabbath.

“When God created the seventh day, he blessed it, and he rested from all the work he had done.” (Genesis 2:3)

Scholars of the Talmud say the reason the Sabbath was created was not because God needed rest but in order to make rest holy, to demand rest of us so that by regularly resting in God, we could ourselves become new people. We are encouraged to keep the day by setting aside weekly routines, and giving ourselves permission to relax, be still, and partake in only those things which refresh our spirits. Our work, after all, will never be complete. But Sunday is not meant to serve merely our own renewal. Sunday frees us to fulfill the Lord’s command to “love one another” in ways we normally pass up during a busy week. Our very celebration of the Sunday Eucharist calls us to this service. As Pope Saint John Paul II exhorts:

“The Sunday eucharist commits the faithful even more to all the works of charity, of mercy, of apostolic outreach.” Dies Domini 69