Walking the Rite way

St Paul is at the heart of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. In the Easter Vigil, the beating heart of the process, the reading from St Paul to Romans describes what we are about:

When we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised into his death.

Other traditions in the Church taking a different set of imagery for Baptism based on the Baptism of Jesus and John’s writing of the water and the Spirit, but we have Paul and the intimate connection between baptism and the Paschal mystery - the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. If the Paschal Mystery is the Big Bang it is Paul who is its Stephen Hawkings! Coming so soon after the event and realising that everything had changed. That Christ’s death and resurrection changed everything, but not only that but that we have a part in it.

For all his rhetoric Paul’s image of the body is central to his thinking — that we all have a part in being Christ, we are Christ’s ambassadors.

Paul is at the heart of the Rite in another way. At the very centre of all Paul’s writing is a person — Christ. Even though Paul never met Jesus in the flesh it is his response and devotion to the person who turned his life and all his thoughts around. Nothing was ever the same again.

In this year of St Paul:

• See how the second reading at Sunday Mass might feed your reflection and catechesis.
• Find out what your diocese is doing to celebrate the year.
• Have you a favourite passage — why not share it with your catechumens.
• Give a number of short passages from Paul for their prayer and reflection — there are times when Paul seems to be a string of familiar quotations

Something I have learnt through experience is never ask a group a question that you do not know how to answer yourself. This is not about being omniscience but being prepared first to draw on one’s own experience before expecting others to do likewise.

As we look beyond the Triduum to the Easter Season and see 6-7 weeks of mystagogy we need to remind ourselves the celebration of the Triduum is the starting point. Perhaps we need to first note down our experience of the liturgies of the three days. I am a great one for jotting down the practical details: what went well, what needs to be attended to next time, what could be better. This is all very useful when we come to prepare the following year’s liturgies. But here I am more thinking of a journal. Reflections and impressions over three days. Even if you are busy as a liturgical minister in some form your need to participate. Participation is the first condition of mystagogy.

On Holy Thursday

• What were your expectations before hand?
• Was there a word or a phrase in the readings that stayed with you?
• Which symbols caught your attention?
• How did you feel at the end?

On Good Friday

• What words would you use to describe the liturgy?
• During the intercessions for whom did you pray?
• What did feel like to kiss the cross?

At the Easter Vigil

• What did you see as you gathered around the fire?
• How many times did images of water come in the readings?
• How would you depict the liturgy of baptism?

These questions are only starters. After you have got down your impressions take the opportunity to come back to them, to reflect on them. Ask why did you think or feel that, what can learn about what we celebrate, about Christ.

These reflections will enable us to help others to reflect. In the end though it will be the neophytes who lead us deeper into the mysteries. This paradox is at the heart of the Easter gospel.

When I prepare the liturgy booklet the one thing I am likely to forget is the reading that changes each year — the gospel at the Easter Vigil. One of the element that is common to gospel in all three years is that the resurrection is announced by someone in white garments. In Matthew ‘His face was like lightning, his robe white as snow’. It is not too fanciful make a connection with those who will rise up from the waters and put on a white garment, white as snow perhaps. In the waters of baptism they will die and rise with Christ, they are the sign that Christ is risen in our midst. From them over the coming weeks we will learn what it all means.