Entering into the Mystery

Now that we have celebrated the Easter mysteries, we have entered into the period of mystagogia. In order to take a fresh look at this important aspect of our ministries as priests and deacons, we turn again to Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium.

In a section entitled “Kerygmatic and Mystagogical Catechesis,” the pope speaks of the “fundamental role of the first announcement or kerygma, which needs to be the center of all evangelizing activity and all efforts at Church renewal. . . . ‘Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you’” (No. 164). The pope teaches that this is known as a “first” evangelization, not in the sense that there will be subsequent, more important teachings, but rather because it is the most fundamental of all catechesis, the evangelization upon which everything else builds.


This entering more deeply into the mysteries is the very heart of the mystagogia. It is “a progressive experience of formation involving the entire community and a renewed appreciation of the liturgical signs of Christian initiation” (No. 166). The pope notes that too many resources and programs have not recognized the need for “a mystagogical renewal, one which would assume very different forms based on each educational community’s discernment” (No. 166). While catechesis itself is always a proclamation of the word, “yet it also demands a suitable environment and an attractive presentation, the use of eloquent symbols, insertion into a broader growth process and the integration of every dimension of the person within a communal journey of hearing and response” (No. 166).

As the pope concludes his mystogogical reflection, he speaks of the need in contemporary evangelization for a “way of beauty”: the via pulchritudinis. Proclaiming Christ to the world is not only something that is right and true, it is also “something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendor and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties. Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus” (No. 167).


How can these observations help us in our own parish ministries during the mystagogia period after Easter? How might they help our neophytes “go deeper” into the mysteries in which they were immersed at the Easter Vigil? How can we be evangelizers with the attitudes the pope calls for above: “approachability, readiness for dialogue, patience, a warmth and welcome which is non-judgmental”? What new symbols, signs, and elements of a via pulchritudinis can be incorporated into our ministries that can best reach our people where they are?
