When we look for a house or a car, most of us will look at several before we buy. In fact, a psychological assessment called the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) suggests that the average person looks at about 8.5 of anything they need to commit to, such as houses and cars, before they make a decision. The range of look-before-we-buy-or-decide is three to nineteen. That is, we can predict that different people will consider 3 to 19 options before they buy or decide.
So, we begin to define who we are or what we are going to do by first rejecting choices that are NOT what we want to choose or decide.
We can apply the same sort of process by first stating what mystagogy is not before we develop what it is.
Mystagogy is not a trivial thing. The teaching in the bible is not “Be holy, if you get around to it, because I (God) am holy” (Leviticus 21:8; Exodus 19:6; 1 Peter 1:16). Rather, it is a command because if we hope to be in heaven eventually, we make getting there uncertain if we have not aimed to become as holy as we can in this life. The opposite of mystagogy is voluntarism, the principle of relying on our own decisions as the most important or main factor in getting to heaven or deciding on our values (my paraphrase of Oxford Languages Online Dictionary). So, the many programs of retreats and Catholic organizations I list in my Mystagogy Leader Guide for the Purgative Period (2024, p. 8-11) were praiseworthy but voluntary. That is, we heard about them through some announcement or a friend told us about them, but the underlying understanding was that we could attend or not. If we chose not to, no harm, no foul.
But, mystagogy is liturgy, that is, it is a “public work” of the church and is as binding for full formation after baptism as the first three periods of the catechumenate are for those who are unbaptize, coming from another religious tradition, or not fully initiated to Catholic life.
Mystagogy is the opposite of those who oppose, defy, abandon, or neglect active participation in Catholic life. It takes only a moment to attend to the reality that there are many baptized Catholics who are angry, defiant, argumentative, hurt, and vengeful toward the Church. But, regardless of all those reactions, the Church is not helpless in reaching out to them.
The task is not to hold gripe or complaint sessions, so SFSGs are not grievance or protest sessions. However, as a competency-based process, the first step is to work through the whole range of human attitudes.
On this it may help to remember that mystagogy grew out of an ecumenical council, Vatican II, and the council’s dogmatic constitution on the sacraments (1963, #65). So, mystagogy is a valid process in support of the great task of the church to bring all of us to the City of God, including the multitude of people whose attitudes make them hostile or avoidant toward living and growing as a baptized Catholic.
Mystagogy is not open to all. It may seem undemocratic that this statement is true.
Catholic mystagogy is only open to baptized Catholics in full communion with the Church. Those who are unbaptized, not fully initiated as Catholics, or coming from other religious traditions have unique issues to work through, and the Catholic catechumenate has three periods aimed at mentoring people toward Baptism or full initiation. Those periods are the process the Church has laid out in what is called the RCIA, the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, which are the written instructions for the actual program, and the OCIA (the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults). The RCIA are the written instructions for the catechumenate; the OCIA is the written instructions put into practice.
Many might say that others should be able to attend Catholic mystagogy because they are also baptized Christians from other Christian communities. That is egalitarianism, the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities (Oxford Languages Online Dictionary). As a Catholic I can assert that other religious traditions may lead their believers into the mysteries of Christian faith as they understand it.
However, the Vatican II constitution on the Church, and 44 years later, pope Benedict XVI (June 29, 2007) have clarified that the fullness of faith “subsists,” that is, exists fully within, only the Catholic church. It’s not an easy concept because it runs counter to the view that all opinions should be treated equally. Though the Church asserts that the fullness of truth and grace and holiness exists in part in other Christian communities because the Holy Spirit is at works in all Christians. However, Catholics hold that the fullness of God’s action exists in the Church. It remains for many people like me to dig it out and make clearly describe the potentiality of that fullness.
If you have more questions on this, I urge you to read about it in the documents of Vatican II or Pope Benedict’s audience for yourself.
Mystagogy is not reducible to simpler, more familiar actions. The tasks of mystagogy cannot be reduced to a couple of "ferverinos," in Italian a word meaning "quick exhortation," that are essentially a pep talks given to increase your zeal. Yet many of the online entries for “mystagogy” are little more than aspirational appeals for evangelization or fervent faith. Reducing mystagogy to that is reductionism. Namely, the practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation. Rather, the needs, learning patterns, underlying theology, patristic history, and much more.
Mystagogy’s potential and practice cannot be reduced to simplistic or familiar but superficial actions. In fact, for me, the more I investigate and immerse myself in the potential of mystagogy, the more I feel overwhelmed and woefully inadequate to unpacking its potential.
Mystagogy will not duplicate the formation of clergy or vowed religious. We can readily observe that clergy get their training and formation in seminaries or, for example, diaconal training programs and vowed religious get their training and formation according to the norms and traditions of their communities.
However, the laity are roughly 99% of the Catholic Church and they generally do not have access to the training and formation of the clergy and religious, yet they share in the Vatican II universal call to holiness as developed in the constitution on the church. The five tasks of mystagogy (Catechism #1025) are five tasks fundamental to fostering holiness in the laity.
Thus, mystagogy is essential for the formation and spiritual growth of the laity on their ascent to the holiness God and Vatican II intends. That is a huge, almost overwhelming task that only the whole Church can take on.
While it is essential that clergy, religious, and the laity observe the ordering that the Vatican II decreed for the clerical and religious interactions with the laity (#23-27) it should be no surprise that the training and formation of the laity would be distinct (#28-32). As the Vatican II document on the laity stipulates, mystagogy should be done in conjunction with the church but will look quite different from formation for clergy and religious. In turn, clergy and religious are encouraged to “favor” and respect lay efforts and methods (Vatican II, The Laity, #24-25).
Mystagogical methods may not be familiar to many Catholics. I will grant that many of the educational, developmental, motivational, research, and formation resources I will include may seem foreign to many. However, they are not changes in doctrine but have the potential of helping us bear fruit in our evangelization efforts.
Accordingly, as the Directory for Catechesis: New Edition makes clear, catechetical ministries such as mystagogy must look to a range of the social sciences such as adult developmental psychology, motivation, learning theory, research outcomes, and so on.
If these new perspectives are confusing or challenges, we do well to remember that we cannot have it both ways, that is, say that we support the distinct catechetical ministries suitable for adults, yet stick with methods that decades of experimental research have shown to be ineffective. We need to open our minds to modifying our methods to what the laity need and respond to rather than sticking to methods that foster helplessness when trying to reach out to those who have wandered away and have made “the new evangelization” aspirational rather than actual in many parishes.
Mystagogy is not teaching and preaching. We can distinguish between preaching and teaching. Preaching involves such things as exhortation, exposition, admonition, encouragement, and comfort, while teaching is the transfer of information and instruction in various areas of content (Oxford Online languages dictionary).
However, mystagogy is more than teaching such as “adult education” or preaching and homilies. Mystagogy is not contrary to the content or methods of teaching and preaching. However, with a focus on competency we can assert that it is not enough to know about our faith or even celebrate it, we must bear fruit or consider ourselves knowledgeable and content but incompetent as Catholic-Christian adults. Jesus is clear that if we do not bear fruit or suggest that staying content with not bearing fruit makes us unfruitful Catholic Christians false prophet-leaders (Matthew 7:15-20).
Sadly, we have many Catholics who know enough about their faith to continue practicing it. However, to put the issue in motivation and learning theory terms, they cannot or will not competently practice their faith. To put it yet another way, competency includes knowledge, but it also includes systematically working through attitudes, developing new skills such as witnessing, and receiving feedback on “how we’re doing.” All that will take a lot of “unpacking” but it should be thought of as a four-step introduction to competency, namely, attitude, knowledge, skills, and assessment of progress.
Mystagogy is not the sacramental Easter season. First, the church has six seasons in the sacramental calendar but none of them are mystagogy.
More fundamentally, though mystagogy and the Mass are “public works” (a.k.a., liturgical) of the Church, the church’s calendar for the Mass, the Mass is a sacramental ministry while mystagogy and the catechumenate are catechetical ministries. To mix up mystagogy and the Church’s celebration of the Easter season (also known as “Eastertide”) for 50 days, culminating with the feast of Pentecost is a conflation, that is, confusing one thing for another.
Thus, if we are to begin to understand to vast potential of mystagogy, the place to start it when someone asserts, “We celebrate Mystagogy in the period after Easter and before Pentecost” we must assert gently but firmly that there is no mystagogy season in the church’s sacramental calendar. Mystagogy doesn’t have a calendar. Rather, it is a period of year-round, and year-to-year time co-extensive with adult spiritual development…but that will take a lot of future unpacking.
Once we can begin to stop mixing up mystagogy and the Easter season we can begin by reflecting on how to accomplish the five tasks assigned to the period in the catechism (#1025). When those tasks are in mind, we may have to admit that:
Please note that these blogs supplement my books on mystagogy, but they are not intended to replace them. To learn about the underlying issues on Mystagogy and one approach to what mystagogical SFSGs (Small Faith-Sharing Groups) might look like, go to Amazon and order your copies of the books.
Every blessing,
Deacon Ray Biersbach, Ph.D.
September 23, 2024