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An Integral Spirituality of the Paschal Mystery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

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Why do Christians celebrate the Paschal Mystery again and again? “We did it last year,” one might say, “Why do it again?” One reason, of course, is the need to deepen our understanding and appreciation of what is in fact the heart of the Christian religion; and from this point of view the Mystery unfolds in two distinct phases. The first phase is linked with the catechumenate (RCIA). The entire Christian community is invited to journey through Lent toward Easter in company with the candidates for Baptism, who are in the last stage of their preparation for sacramental initiation into the Body of Christ. Here the obvious intention is to promote in the community at large a progressively deeper spiritual plunge into the Mystery of Christ’s Death and Rising. The second phase of the Mystery encompasses the fifty days following Easter, and culminates with Pentecost Sunday. During this period there is a cycle of readings from the Johannine gospel, which taken as a whole constitutes a second catechesis. Here the Catechist is the Risen Christ himself. The teaching unfolds in three stages. It begins with the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus on New Birth (Jn 3); then there is his discourse on the Bread of Life (Jn 6); and finally the words he spoke in the Upper Room, which reveal the Gift of the Spirit (Jn 14-17). Taken together these readings are a profound instruction on the Church’s two-fold endowment of Sacrament and Spirit.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 I have available a set of notes which have been very helpful to me in conceiving what follows. They are described as ‘the first draft’ of an English translation of what seems to be a supplement to, or revision of Bernard Lonergan's De Verbo Incarnato, particularly the last part, Pars V De Redemptione. The translation was done by Michael G. Shields, SJ in Toronto in 1987, and the copy I have was printed 20.6.90.

2 As Lonergan would have it, “evil is overcome by a victory of the will” (op.cit., 73a).