The Symbols of Easter throughout Fifty Days

Symbols summon our sensibilities. When robustly employed within well executed worship, liturgical symbols contain the potential to reveal an unspoken truth or awaken receptivity as God invites us and we respond to the call of Christ.  Likewise, the scanty deployment of poorly prepared worship weakens the prospective opulence of liturgical symbols, failing to utilize their full-bodied possibility toward an encounter with the living God. How do the rites we celebrate mediate a befriending God within our liturgical worship through the rich use of the physical symbols at our disposal font, fire, sacred scent, altar table and ambo, the bodily constituency of a gathered people, as well as sacred music, art and worship environment? Do we employ them to act as agents of sacramental grace – visible symbols of something invisible - that “serve the reality of the paschal mystery”[i]? Might a different perspective of liturgical symbols as conduits of grace inform our receptivity if we allow the full weight of these liturgical symbols to catapult us deeply into mystery? I suggest that robust and worthy liturgical symbols bridge our conscious and unconscious sensibilities into the realm of sacred mystery, transforming the transcendent into a human reality through our bodily experiences within public worship. I offer a narrative to illustrate.

Some years ago, a former college student invited me to celebrate his Christian Initiation at St. Cecilia’s Church in Boston, MA. Simultaneously, the parish’s proficient music director Richard Clark, now the music director at Boston’s cathedral asked my daughter, an undergraduate voice and education major and member of the choir to sing The Exsultet at the Easter Vigil.

At Vigil sunset, we gathered on urban holy ground. St. Cecilia’s pastor Fr. John Unni welcomed us with his usual warmth and his 100 watt smile that brightened the darkened sky. Standing on the upper landing of the church, my eyes surveyed the feast of symbols before me. There stood Micah, my former student among the elect, boldly positioned front and center on a city street as the living symbol of our own immersion within the paschal event. As I listened to the prayers, I breathed in the perfumed smoke scent from the mammoth fire flaring from the massive vessel. This collection of richly deployed liturgical symbols acted as agents of grace, evoking and actualizing the depth of our collective gratuity beyond words for this night of nights.

After celebrating with Micah and his family, I returned home and went to bed. My cell phone rang somewhere around 2:00 am and I awakened completely when I heard Micah’s animated voice on the other end of the call and heard traffic noise in the background.“Micah, where are you?” I asked, conjuring up several possible terrible scenes in my mind. But Micah put my fears at rest. I could hear such ardent joy in Micah’s laughing response. “Denise, I’m just so excited, I’m walking through the streets of Boston holding my candle! I can’t believe I’m finally a baptized Catholic!”

Imagine the image. Micah, God’s beloved and joyous neophyte walking through the darkened streets, so wholly ignited into the portal of the Easter mysteries that he became the candle, the light of Christ in the world. I felt profound regret that I did not accompany Micah, symbol of God, on his walk on this night of night as he extolled, remembered and rejoiced on his mystical experience of sacred encounter. As the phone call ended, this post-modern day John the Baptist continued his sojourn through the urban streets of Boston, cleaving to his candle and savoring his sensibilities within the sacred. I mourned that the entire community who celebrated the Easter mysteries in that church that night did not accompany Micah on his urban pilgrimage. Imagine us all bearing our Easter candles to illuminate the darkened city streets, allowing Micah’s metanoia within the Paschal Mystery transform us as the actualized Body of Christ. Praise the Lamb; what a sight.

The following day, Micah recalled the power of the Easter symbols within his own Christian Initiation. “I felt surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who celebrated my entrance into the Catholic Church. What fellowship!” Assembly “We recalled salvation history in the readings and responded by singing beautiful psalms.” Word. Sacred music. “Waiting in the dark with only the light of the Paschal candle shining made me feel like I was in the tomb like Jesus, waiting to be resurrected. I heard how my own story now entered into God’s salvation history.” Word. Darkness. Paschal light. As I received the sacrament of baptism, I remember hearing with the ears of my heart a small voice saying, ’Remember this moment.” Water.Anamnesis. “When Fr. John poured oil on me in the anointing, my heart warmed. My mind began to speak in the tongues of angels.” Priest. Oil. “When we received Eucharist, neither my tongue nor my soul will ever forget the taste of that bread and that wine. I am a new creation in a new community!” Bread. Wine. “The experience was the deepest feeling of ‘home’ I have ever known. I am home at last.” Church

Micah’s encounter with the Holy through an Easter Vigil fecund with robust symbolism begs the Christian Rite of Initiation’s mystagogy to ongoing conversion: a consistent and weekly interaction between the neophytes and the entire Christian community throughout the Easter season and the entire year. (NSC 23, 24) With our beloved neophytes, we recall and move deeper into the meaning of the authentic immersion of our response to live in Christ’s name, his life and his love.

In this critical period of mystagogy, why do the neophytes, our most potent symbol within the Easter season vanish from our midst after the celebration of the Easter Vigil in so many parishes? Do the newly baptized Christians retain their special location in your church as the iconic reminder of God’s continued presence in your community? (RCIA, 248) Do your neophytes return on a weekly basis to share the sacramental life of the parish for theological reflection and support? Sharing experiences renews the neophytes’ commitment to Christ who summons us to follow him. (RCIA 75) Might we not all benefit if we drank from of the Easter font of community that draws us into a more intimate and awe-filled wonder at our own understanding of who we are as disciples of Jesus? (RCIA 250) Suppose we gave of ourselves after we leave our churches and welcomed our neophytes into our homes for lunch or dinner during the week, or perhaps share a cup of coffee? Do you recall your last conversation with a newly baptized Christian?  How did that experience transform you?

What might the symbol of hospitality look like to the occasional Catholics if they were invited into the conversation with the newly baptized? Who would understand their hesitancy to do so better than a neophyte? How better to teach and embody koinonia to a neophyte and plunge them into the discipleship of true charity?

Symbols can change us, possessing the loaded dynamite that can potentially explode diluted faith into the fiery witness of Pentecost. Are you ready?

Sources

Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (United States edition), Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), 1988

National Statutes for the Catechumenate, National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), 1986

The RCIA: Transforming the Church. A Resource for Pastoral Implementation by Thomas H. Morris, Paulist Press, 1989, 1997.

The Effects of Baptism by Mark Searle from One at the Table, The Reception of Baptized Christians. Ronald A. Oakham, O. CARM. Liturgy Training Publications, 1995.

Worship: Exploring the Sacred by James Empereur, SJ. The Pastoral Press, 1987

The Liturgical Body: Symbol and Ritual by Margaret Mary Kelleher, O.S.U. from Bodies of Worship: Explorations in Theory and Practice. Bruce T. Morrill, Editor.

The Lent, Triduum, And Easter Answer Book: ML Answers the 101 Most-Asked Questions by Paul J. Niemann. Resource Publications, Inc., 2010

Envisioning Environment by Anthony J. Mancuso and Caroline M. Thomas. Resource Publications, Inc., 2011

Theological reflection from the diary and conversation of Micah Christian, Neophyte 2010 – 2011

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[i] See Bruce T. Morrill, Bodies of Worship: Explorations in Theory and Practice (Collegeville, Minnesota: Order of St. Benedict, Inc., 1999), 7.