AEJT Editorial: The Paschal Mystery

Faculty of Theology and Philosophy

School of Theology

AEJT editorial.pdf (PDF, 13KB)

Each year, I am astonished and enthralled by the careful construction and rhythm of the scriptural readings for Lent. We are offered such rich fare, with readings that are so very thought-provoking and challenging. Among my favorite Sundays of the year is the Second Sunday of Lent when we listen to the gospel account of the Transfiguration. How exquisitely placed this narrative is in the Lenten liturgical cycle, just a few weeks before the commemoration of the Lord's passion and death. It is as if, within these few short weeks, we are thrown from the heights to the depths of human existence, from the ecstasy of the Transfiguration to the agony of the Crucifixion. Before our eyes, the full spectrum of experience and emotion within which we live our lives is graphically depicted. How often, we too, like Our Lord, find ourselves thrown from the heights to the pits, from the peaks of happiness and joy to the troughs of darkness and desolation.

Our Lenten readings prepare us for the unfolding of Jesus' paschal mystery that comes into sharp focus with the highly dramatic and powerful rituals of the Easter Triduum, those three days of the "pasch" or "passing over" of the Lord, commencing on the evening of Holy Thursday and culminating in the Easter Vigil of Holy Saturday. In the wisdom of the paschal liturgies, we begin by attending, basically as observers, to the unfolding drama on Palm Sunday. But, as the drama progresses, a distinct shift of perspective occurs, whereby we, now as Jesus' disciples, following in his way, are called to imitate his servant ministry. On Holy Thursday and Good Friday, we enact the shape of his mission, so tangibly expressed in the foot washing and culminating in his passion and death. We are called to make present in our lives that same self-giving pattern of his life and teaching. The movement culminates in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil, when we are called to enter more deeply still into the mystery of Christian discipleship. Here we are called beyond even imitation to incorporation through baptism, and nourished by the Eucharist, into Jesus' paschal mystery of death and resurrection. His mission is our mission, not by mere imitation but by a real incorporation of ourselves in him and into his paschal mystery.

In commemorating the paschal mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection and celebrating our incorporation into him, his life, his mission, and his paschal mystery, we are challenged to reflect on the significance of the paschal mystery of death and resurrection for ourselves, the whole Church, and for the world itself. The challenge is to face full-on the mystery of inescapable suffering in our homes, communities, and the world and to recognize anew that suffering is no aberration, nor even an obstacle on our journey to the fullness of life. As John Paul II expressed so profoundly in his encyclical, Salvifici Doloris (1984), suffering is positively part of the mystery of our lives.

The Holy Week liturgies starkly enact the reality of our salvation in the very midst of suffering. The message that resounds through the liturgies of the Easter Triduum is that God works in and through suffering. The resurrection is celebrated not just as a moment of triumph "after" Jesus' suffering and quite separate from it, but as a mystery born in and of his suffering. The power of God that is so manifest in the resurrection is not celebrated as a triumph beyond or after suffering, but as a mystery that emerges by, through, and in it. This is indeed the deep structure of the Church's paschal liturgies. It is shaped by the Church's uncanny instinct for the unity of the paschal mystery of Jesus' passion and resurrection – neither the Cross nor the resurrection alone – as the crown of the liturgical year. Each of the liturgies of the Triduum enacts our incorporation, individually and collectively, into this one paschal mystery of death and resurrection, this mystery of new life through suffering and death.

Those of us who grieve for our wounded Church – its difficulties and its breakdowns, its suffering and brokenness, its seeming failure to mediate meaning to young people, the continuing haemorrhage from its ranks, the erosion of its esteem in the wider community in this post-modern, post-Christian, post-everything world – are challenged to take a paschal perspective here too. That means recognizing a greater mystery, the paschal mystery of life through death at work in us, not just as individuals, but as Church. Part of the paschal challenge is to discern what to let go of, what's worth fighting for, and what's worthy dying for. It calls for the courage and the wisdom to peel away the accretions of custom and convention that have accumulated over the centuries. Most importantly of all, it calls for the faith and the courage to find anew, in each generation, the Crucified and Risen One who makes all the difference, the God-man, whose paschal mystery of life and death transforms our lives, our sufferings and our brokenness, so that our pain-points become our growth-points from which new life springs.

Associate Professor Anne Hunt
Australian Catholic University