Angelus News | April 8, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 7

LETTER AND SPIRIT
SCOTT HAHN
Scott Hahn is founder of the
St. Paul Center for Biblical
Theology; stpaulcenter.com.
The signs and the signified
And so we begin
our great Passover.
We enter
Holy Week and then the
Sacred Triduum — the
three-day memorial that
culminates in Easter.
We begin in the Upper
Room with Jesus as he
makes his self-offering
at the seder meal. There
he presents the mystery
that we re-present in
every Mass.
We remain with him
when the disciples fall
asleep. And yet the next
day we recognize ourselves
in the crowd that
cries, “Crucify him!”
We make the Way of
the Cross with him. We
stand at the cross with
Mary. In the stark liturgy
of Good Friday we enter a terrible silence.
And we remain there until the brilliance of the Easter Vigil
— a veritable explosion of light and sound. All the elements
of the cosmos seem to conspire in praise: fire and water, air
and voices.
Our sorrow is brought sacramentally to an end. It vanishes
into joy, as our Lenten austerities vanish into the Church’s
definitive moment of glory: the Lord’s resurrection.
In the early Church this was the moment that proved a
preacher’s mettle. Now began the season of mystagogy. The
word means, literally, teaching about the mysteries. It was
used to describe the first sermons preached in the Easter
season — sermons describing and defining the sacraments.
Newly baptized Christians sat stunned by the rituals they
had just undergone, and the clergy began the gradual task
of explaining the rites — beginning with the signs and the
symbols and proceeding to the divine realities they signify.
Great voices resounded in those years: Ambrose in Milan,
Cyril in Jerusalem, John Chrysostom in Constantinople, Augustine
in Africa. They left no soul unsure and no Christian
unclear about what had just happened.
“The Last Supper,” by Pieter Pourbus, 1523/1524-
1584, Flemish. | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Egeria the
Pilgrim testified
that Jerusalem resounded
with the
applause of the
newly baptized
believers as they
listened to their
bishop preach the
Paschal Mysteries.
That, dear
friends, is what
St. Pope John
Paul II meant
by the phrase
“eucharistic
amazement.” And
that is what we
need to restore
to the Church in
our time.
What we need
to do — in
everything we do
— is mystagogy,
after the ancient
models.
We want to hear full churches resound with praise for the
divine mysteries, the sacraments instituted by Christ and
entrusted to the Church.
Our own times, however, are a bit different from the time
of the early Church. In the fourth century, mystagogy was
aimed directly at new Christians. Today we need to turn our
attention to people who have long been warming our pews.
Surveys show that a minority of churchgoing Catholics do
not believe what Catholics have always believed about the
Mass. We need to evangelize our coreligionists, and mystagogy,
I believe, is the way.
Mystagogy inspires wonder about our last reception of the
sacraments — and it carries us forward to the next. It doesn’t
matter how long we’ve been Catholic. The power of the
sacraments never diminishes.
Our Triduum is beautiful, but we do not linger there. It is a
beginning, and from there we go on from glory to glory.
32 • ANGELUS • April 8, 2022