Drop the word “mystagogy” at your next cocktail party and the response is likely to be “Mister who?” An archaic word, mystagogy is seldom used in modern, secular language and likely not understood when it is used. Even within Catholicism, where its deep roots have shaped the Church’s methods of catechesis and initiation, mystagogy has been relegated to a dusty corner in the patristic section of Christian scholarship. Since the seventh century scant attention has been paid to the true definition of mystagogy as a theological means of introducing humans to the experience of Christ.
After Vatican II made it clear that the order of catechumenate would be reintroduced and that the rites of initiation for adults would be revised (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 64–66), interest in the pastoral application of mystagogy was revived. In 1972, when the Rite for the Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) was established, mystagogy was again given credence in the life of the Church as a formal step on the path to becoming fully invested in the Catholic life. Since that time some pastoral leaders have paid increasing attention to the ancient notion of mystagogy, attempting to recreate a mystagogical experience much like that of the early centuries of the church.
Greek in origin, the word mystagogy is sometimes translated as “savoring the mysteries” or “educating one in the mysteries” or “leading the one who is initiated.” Used first by the pagan cults of Greece and Rome, mystagogy was a way to secretly initiate and inculturate new members. In the pagan mystagogies, experience, not doctrine, was the key element of getting to know one’s god. There was essentially no theology associated with pagan gods and therefore no need for catechesis before or after one joined a cult. In the Greek pagan cults of Demeter, Mithra, and Dionysius, for instance, initiates would re-enact events in the lives of the gods through ritualistic feasts and orgies, receiving in essence a share in the lives of the gods through the highly sensual and psychic ceremonies.
While ancient Christians frowned on the cultic practices of the pagans, they felt comfortable borrowing the language, if not some of the methods, of pagan mystagogy. When the adult ranks of the Christian catechumenate started to swell in the fourth century after Constantine’s Edict of Tolerance offered legal protection to the beleaguered Church, the notion of mystagogy was adapted to Christianity. It allowed bishops to initiate larger numbers of converts “into the mysteries” while still offering the deeply personal experience of Christ that had been the hallmark of Christian conversion. In fact, because Christianity stressed a pervasive, life-changing experience of Christ at the point of conversion, it was well suited for the pagan method of mystagogy.
But mystagogy was evident in the Church going back even to the time of Christ. In the apostolic era, as the infant Church struggled to digest its still-fresh experience of Christ, early converts could know the still-developing Christian theology concerning creation, death, resurrection, and eternal life only by participating in the experiences of baptism, Eucharist, and charitable ministry.
The renowned mystagogues Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Theodore of Mopsuestia stressed an initiation based first in an experience of Christ through the “mysteries” (which would later become the sacraments in the Latin church). The experience was followed by an intense period of catechesis explaining for the neophyte Christians everything they had just encountered in the rituals of exorcism, baptism, chrism, and Eucharist. Because the rituals were secretive, the mystagogue was bound not to reveal any of the mysteries until after the catechumens had experienced them at the Easter vigil, when initiation into the church took place. This process allowed the neophytes’ intellectual g.asp of Christianity to be built upon their mystical experience.
The Church Fathers did not view mystagogy as simply an initiation to the sacraments but an initiation through the sacraments. The initiation rituals conveyed a reality through which the catechumens would become invested in the life of Christ by experiencing him. Because of this, the Church Fathers insisted that the rituals of initiation be carried out with a great deal of pomp and solemnity and that they incorporate sensual, evocative symbolism capable of reinforcing the mystery of the experience.
For instance, the rite of exorcism was performed when the catechumens were shoeless and clad in scant garments, mimicking prisoners of war who walked barefoot and naked, to remind the catechumens of their captivity in sin. The symbolism of man’s bondage in sin was heightened in Cyril’s Jerusalem where the ceremonial exorcisms were performed in the Church of the Resurrection, which offered the trembling catechumens views of Golgotha, the Holy Sepulchre, and the ruins of old Jerusalem. During the exorcism the bishop or exorcist used “frightening and horrible words” (according to John Chrysotosom’s Baptismal Instructions) and breathed on the catechumens to force the evil spirits out of them—just as Christ had forced the evil spirits out of possessed men and women—and to prepare them for the impending visitation of the Holy Spirit.
Baptism also offered great mystagogical moments because it re-enacted an actual event in the life of Christ. Time and again in their writings the mystagogues reminded their neophytes that baptism was a “bath of regeneration”; through baptism the neophytes had died to their old selves and were reborn in Christ to share in his death and Resurrection. Indeed, “triune” baptism, immersing the catechumens three times in the baptismal pool, was explained by Cyril as representing the three days Christ spent in the darkness of the tomb. Just as Christ emerged from the darkness after the third day, Cyril told his neophytes, they too had emerged from their spiritual darkness after baptism, unrecognizable to their former selves.
This fourth-century experience would have been especially potent in its symbolism because people were baptized naked. By removing their clothes the catechumens were putting off the “old men” with their old deeds, and instead were humbling themselves, imitating Christ’s nakedness on the cross, and preparing for the cleansing of his Resurrection.
Some modern pastoral leaders have a tendency to interpret the mystagogies of the fourth-century bishops as mere catechetical explanations of the sacraments. This results in the common notion that the mystagogical period of the RCIA is nothing more than a fifty-day catechesis to aid the converts in their reflection on initiation. This is an unfortunate and incomplete interpretation; it does not allow mystagogy to flourish throughout the entire period of conversion as the true and proper theology that it is. The brilliance of patristic mystagogy is that it caused the catechumens to actually participate in the saving activities of Christ through the experiences of exorcism, baptism, chrism, and Eucharist.
Undergirding the notion of mystagogy as theology was the fact that each of the mystagogical fathers relied heavily on biblical “typology” when explaining the sacramental mysteries to the Christian neophytes. Typology—interpreting the scriptures in such a way that the Old Testament and the New Testament each make the other relevant to the progression of God’s salvific order—was used as a means of understanding God’s mysterious plan for humanity. Particularly with Ambrose, typology offered clear examples of just how that plan unfolded: Creation, illustrated in the Old Testament, was united through the revelation of the New Testament with salvation, which was made available to all mankind through the sacramental rites of the church.
The mystagogues introduced heavy doses of typology into their baptismal homilies to show that the events in which the neophytes were participating were foreshadowed in the Old Testament then ordained in the New Testament, the mystagogues created a rich liturgical symbolism that positioned the sacramental experiences of the converts squarely within the salvific progression designed by God.
In addition to being a way to know Christ, mystagogy was also a way of learning to live as Christ. The fourth-century bishops used mystagogical theology to call the new Christians to a radical conversion of life, a new state of consciousness that caused the neophytes to examine everything with the eyes and mind of Christ. Mystagogy was more than just the experience of God in the events that surrounded the Easter vigil; it was a process that started with conversion and culminated in a life consecrated to the missionary service of Christ.
The best example of this can be found in the catechetical mystagogy of John Chrysostom. Reminding his neophytes that they had “put on a new robe in Christ,” the famous golden-mouthed preacher of Antioch commanded them to “keep the garment clean and new,” allowing the doctrine (orthodoxy) gained in their conversion experiences to manifest itself in practice (orthopraxy) in their daily lives. Chrysostom played on the word “catechesis” (which is rooted in the Greek word for “echo”) when he told his neophytes he expected to see and hear his baptismal instructions echo in their minds, on their lips, and in their actions. Railing against the immorality of the lewd Roman theaters and the gladiatorial battles of the Hippodrome, not to mention the pernicious laxity of faith fostered by a comfortable lifestyle in prosperous Byzantium, Chrysostom exhorted the converts to a level of virtue and morality that would allow them to live as angels, keeping their minds in heaven while still walking on the earth. Clearly, for Chrysostom, as well as for his contemporary bishops, mystagogy was not a single step toward a deeper understanding of Christ: It was a pervasive and everlasting calling to participate in the holiness of Christ.
The heyday of mystagogy came to an end in the sixth century, when adult converts became rarer and the order of the catechumenate disappeared. Celebration of the mysteries of initiation was replaced in the community with an emphasis on the individual’s reception of the sacraments. Catechesis was offered as an intellectual preparation for the individual’s participation in the sacraments, with little or no attention paid to the communal experience of God’s interaction with humanity.
After the resurrection of the catechumenate with Vatican II, the Church began to examine how the notion of mystagogy might be applied in the modern world. The result was the 1972 introduction of the Rite for the Christian Initiation of Adults, which, in theory, recreated the patristic model of conversion and initiation. The RCIA offers four basic steps in the conversion process: evangelization, the period when the Gospel is heard and the discernment to become a Catholic takes place; catechumenate, the period of instruction in the faith; sacramental celebration, the actual rites of initiation that are celebrated at the Easter vigil; and mystagogy, the fifty-day period between Easter and Pentecost when the neophytes and the entire Christian community focus on their growth in faith.
Unfortunately, the RCIA only timidly recreates the deeply mysterious, pervasive experience of Christ sought by the early Church. The RCIA document avoids an intellectual, catechetical approach to conversion and initiation. It is mistake, however, to make mystagogy simply a chronological stage in the conversion process that one implicitly enters and exits within the prescribed fifty-day period after Easter.
Nevertheless, signs of pastoral understanding of the meaning of mystagogy as a call to a radical conversion are encouraging. Modern writers such as Mary Frolich (“Toward a Modern Mystagogy,” Liturgy, winter 1983), Robert Duggan (Sunday Meetings for Mystagogy,” Modern Liturgy, April 1991), and Tom Ranzino (“The Art of Mystagogy,” Today’s Parish, March 1992) place strong emphasis on the need for mystagogy to be a community affair, where all members of the Body of Christ celebrate through the sacraments the new lives of the neophytes.
Practically speaking, the RCIA, in attempting to imitate the initiation methods of the great fourth-century bishops, stresses experience as the first way of knowing God’s gracious movement in the lives of his people when it is coupled with an ongoing catechesis that reflects the maturity of the adult converts and corroborates their sacramental experience. This means that the modern sacramental celebrations of reconciliation, baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist should not be merely perfunctory symbols. As Catherine Dooley points out (in “From the Visible to the Invisible: Mystagogy in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,” The Living Light, spring 1995), these sacraments should be lived as opportunities to share in the life and experience of Christ and to transform the bodies, minds, and souls of the neophytes into a daily expression of Christ.
The entire Catholic community, not just its pastoral leaders, is responsible for undertaking and maintaining this transformation. Indeed, there is an essential interplay that exists between the faith of the catechumen and the faith of the fully initiated that can encourage a true mystagogical experience for everyone in the community. During and especially after the period of initiation, the witness of the faithful participating in the sacraments and the ministerial life of the Church is a source of great inspiration and comfort to the catechumen.
Likewise, the enthusiastic embrace of the faith that the new converts bring to the communal celebration of the liturgy and sacraments can lift the spirits of “veteran” Catholics who may have become complacent. It is especially important that the community of fully initiated Catholics serves as mentors and guides to the converts as they reflect on the mysteries that unfold before them through their meditation on the Gospels, their participation in the Eucharist, and their ministry in charity to others. In this sense, the community evokes the mystagogical spirit of John Chrysostom by helping the new Catholics to understand that their orthodoxy is to be made manifest as orthopraxy: that worship and daily life are obligated to support, validate, and correspond to one another.
The attention pastoral leaders are beginning to give these critical elements may be signals that the Church is rediscovering the unique theological and pastoral values plumbed in the Church’s ancient traditions. Mystagogy, it appears, will again be used to focus neophytes—and all members of the Church—not only on the energizing force of the Easter experience but on the sustaining force of Christ throughout life.