From the Archives: "Toward a Modern Mystagog"

Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.

This 1983 essay by Mary Frohlich, “Toward a Modern Mystagogy,” dives into the history of how the mysteries of God revealed in Christ Jesus have been imparted to catechumens and the faithful over the centuries. Because mysteries are unknowable, she explores how mystagogical teaching evolved from the mystery cults of the Greeks who offered to newcomers “the geography of the other world.” In much the same vein, early church theologians imparted through the experiences of Christian worship what it meant to partake of the sacraments: baptism and the meal. The mystagogical sermons of Cyril, Irenaeus, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and others ushered the newly baptized into deeper understanding of the Church’s identity. She traces the weakening of the catechumenate which disappeared in the sixth century but has been reawakened in our time for both Roman Catholics and, though more reluctantly, for Protestants. –– Melinda Quivik

Selected Quotes from

“Toward a Modern Mystagogy”

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Mystagogy is an orientation tour of the new country in which one lives after baptism. It connects the maps and guidebooks previously studied with the new reality, and it provides opportunities for supervised "practice hikes" before one is turned loose for the long haul.
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From the very beginning of the Christian movement, conversion to the way of Christ meant total reorientation of one's life in the light of this "mystery." Christians were those who, believing in the plan of infinite love that God holds for humankind, strove with all their energy to transform their lives in order to be in accord with it and to further it.

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The early Christians developed their own concept of mystery as the saving plan of the one true God, uniquely revealed in the paschal experience of Christ and offered for our participation through faith in this revelation. From the earliest days, the power flowing from the cross and resurrection was mediated to believers through the ritual acts of baptism and eucharist, both of which have historical and theological roots in the life of Jesus.

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The early Christians focused much less on the individual's experience of the mystery and much more on the church's experience. It was the church, as the primary recipient of God's revelation; that could recognize, name, rejoice in, and nurture the specific applications of the mystery wherever they occurred.

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The catechumenate is by no means structured as a Pelagian "earning" of salvation. Christianity would lose its very heart if it did not maintain uncompromisingly that we are saved by God's free act, not our own. This is the essence of the "mystery" which is mystagogy's subject. God's action, however, takes different forms at different times. At some times it comes primarily through the scriptural word, calling the catechumen to conversion; at other times primarily through the liturgical act, an extension of Christ's historical and risen life; at still other times primarily through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the church and in individual Christians. God's act of uniting us in love to God and one another normally is not instantaneous, but takes place over time, in more or less definite stages which are in accord with the nature of the human material with which God is working.

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Mary Frohlich, RSCJ, is a professor emerita of spirituality who taught at Catholic University in Washington DC.

Frohlich, M. “Toward a Modern Mystagog,” Liturgy 4, no. 1 (1983): 50–59.

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