RCIA Mystagogy
The Challenge of the Mystagogy Portion of RCIA--Are We Up to It?
In his book, The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God, Stratford Caldecott, claims that too many converts are "left to sink or swim in the parish" in part because of a shortage of priests or spiritual directors and the fact that they receive scant encouragement "to journey deeper into the Christian mystery." It is a reminder that initiatory sacraments are not "graduations," but rather invitations to a deeper communion with Christ.
One of the looming challenges facing RCIA teams after Easter is how best to present the period of postbaptismal catechesis or mystagogy. The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults notes, "This is a time for the community and the neophytes together to grow in deepening their grasp of the paschal mystery and in making it part of their lives through mediation on the Gospel, sharing in the Eucharist and doing works of charity" (244).
The Rites book says "since the distinctive spirit and power of postbaptismal catechesis or mystagogy derive from the new personal experience of the sacraments and of the community, its main setting is the so-called Masses of neophytes, that is, the Sunday masses of the Easter season" (247). It asks that the "presence and needs of the neophytes be taken into consideration" in the general intercessions (248).
Many parishes use "Breaking open the Word," as form of making the Easter season readings accessible to the neophytes on a deeper level. This presupposes catechesis which introduces Biblical typology and the spiritual sense of Scripture as the neophytes delve deeper into the mysteries.
Mystagogy is a consideration of the sacraments that should be integrated into instruction and in the thoughts of the catechumen and candidates long before it actually begins after Easter. Sister Sandra DeMissi, in an article entitled, "Too Tired for Mystagogy?" in Catechumenate Magazine, writes:
Our catechesis needs mystagogy. The restoration of the practice of mystagogy offers the Church an opportunity in making post-baptismal catechesis an ongoing enterprise for adults. The Catechesis of the Adults is the "principle kind of catechsis" (GDC 20). Maintaining the mystagogical principle will birth catechesis for adults as a means of pastoral care.
An effective source that might be used for mystagogy is Living the Mysteries: A Guide for Unfinished Christians by Professor Scott Hahn and Mike Aquilina. This book deals with the signs, types, or what we might call, the "mystagogy" of the sacraments. The sacrament itself is a reality and as surely as heaven touches earth, they represent divine and spiritual realities, which, however, humans cannot see in their deepest reality. The authors note:
That is what Christ taught his disciples, and his disciples taught their disciples, in the Church's tradition: to read the Bible typologically [as Christ did for two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24], to see the events of the Old Testament as a 'shadow of good things to come' in Christ, and so to see the events of the New Testament as a true form of realities that are real and invisible.
Mystagogy teaches the new born Christian how they are to understand the Church as the Kingdom promised in the Old Covenant, to see their baptism in the context of salvation history from the time of Adam. According to the Catechism, mystagogy initiates people into the mystery of Christ, "by preceding from the visible to the invisible, from the sign to the thing signified, from the sacraments to the mysteries" (CCC 1075). By reading the expressions of this typology in St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. John Chrysostom and St. Leo the Great, you will receive a sweet taste of mystagogy that can open one's spiritual mind and heart.
Another book that would be of great value in assisting the neophytes to understand importance and nature of biblical theology, including that of the sacraments is Cardinal Jean Danielou's From Shadows to Reality. It was critical to the early Church Fathers to demonstrate the fulfillment of the prophecies about the Messiah which fill the Old Testament and to show how the "types" of the Old Testament are fulfilled in the sacraments given to the Church by Christ. Some examples are the Mystagogical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem or De Mysteriis and De Sacramentis by St. Ambrose. It is also important to recognize that understanding the liturgy more fully is not possible without understanding the biblical typology upon which it rests.
Origen and the Alexandrian School of Scriptural interpretation especially brought out the spiritual richness of the developing tradition, which goes back to the Jewish scholar Philo. However, even the more literally focused Antioch School spoke of types, though their interpretation differed. For example, the Antiochian school saw the water from the rock in the desert as a type of Eucharist (which comes from the Pauline tradition), while the Alexandrian school saw it as a type of Baptism (from the Johannine tradition). Yet as Danielou notes "we meet an agreement of all schools upon the fundamental types." Thus, he can conclude, "This proves that we are face to face with something which is part and parcel of the deposit of Revelation."
For an excellent discussion of the use of Scripture in presenting mystagogy, Click Here