CNA Staff, Apr 3, 2024 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
A new video series offering a deeper look into the mysteries of the Mass will begin April 4.
“Beautiful Light: A Paschal Mystagogy,” produced by the National Eucharistic Revival, will be livestreamed on the revival’s Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram accounts at 8 p.m. ET on seven consecutive Thursdays from April 4 to May 16.
According to the website, this series “is your entry point into one of the most ancient and fruitful traditions of the Church — a catechesis on the sacred mysteries of our faith, focusing on our liturgical life, called mystagogy.”
The video series will be hosted by Sister Alicia Torres, a member of the Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago, and Tanner Kalina, a National Eucharistic Revival missionary. Several bishops will also be leading episodes including Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Archbishop Charles Thompson, Archbishop Gregory John Hartmayer, Bishop Robert Brennan, Bishop Gregory Gordon, Bishop Andrew Cozzens, and Bishop Joseph Coffey.
Each week, viewers will hear from a bishop about what is truly happening during different parts of the Mass. Some of the aspects covered will include the offertory, the epiclesis prayer, transubstantiation, the Great Amen, and more.
Sister Alicia Torres told CNA that the series was inspired from a “desire to help people really enter into the mysteries at Mass, really pray the Mass,” which has been a “top priority” for those involved.
“During Easter 2023, we ran an in-depth mystagogy essay series. A tremendous amount of prayer, research, and love was poured into that series,” she said. “We were so pleased by how it turned out, and also realize that for many people a long-form essay is not an accessible format. We were praying about how we could take that content and bring it to more people, and that is how the livestream series emerged.”
She shared that the series is “meant to reach people in the pews right now — whether you are a cradle Catholic or recently entered the Church this Easter.”
Torres said she hopes this series “truly helps us all to pray the Mass better. What do I mean by that? At Vatican II, the fathers of the council called us to fully active and conscious participation at Mass. While indeed that means speaking the responses, singing the songs, and making the gestures, it also — and more importantly — means engaging at the level of the heart.”
She continued: “The Church teaches that the Mass actually forms us. When I consider that truth, it draws me right away to Jesus’ new commandment, that we love one another as he has loved us. The Mass is our participation in the paschal mystery — the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. We literally relive, with Jesus, what he did to save us, and we participate in it with him. That is profoundly beautiful and mysterious and can feel very hard to access at times. That is why we need opportunities like this mystagogy series to help us.”
“We hope [viewers] are inspired to share not only what they learn but also who they learn more about and fall more in love with: Jesus and his true presence in the Eucharist. We want to help equip people to be Eucharistic missionaries.”
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In his Prayer Before Mass, Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed: “We all join in offering this Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, this unbloody RENEWAL AND EXTENSION of Christ’s Sacrifice [!] on the Cross for the following intentions [….]”
Hopefully the series will establish within/beyond people’s stirred psychology the fact that each Mass IS the very same one as on Calvary, and not a pious replica. More than a “memorial” in the more obscure sense.
Our post-modern culture is self-immunized against this possibility and this Reality–that eternity is REALLY PRESENT within our time, sacramentally (CCC 1374). Might as well remember, too, the historicity (!) and equally alarming fact (!) of the Incarnation at a particular time and place–not as an enthusiasm but as the gifted fulfillment of the eternal within time…
Too bad that in some circles the Eucharistic Revival (earlier the Eucharistic Coherence…) seems to be more-or-less just another “special case” (?) within a polyhedral Church, confined as it is as a good thing for the United States.
Why be truly universal when you can be more of a collection of synodal roundtables tutored by “experts” and “study groups.”:
Controverting the settled question: A recurring tilt toward non-ordained deaconesses, as the camel’s nose under the tent (we mean “field hospital”); demotion of the Mystical Body of Christ within a more contour-free congregationalism in practice; an eclipsed Council/councils by a more horizontal, permanent council of some sort; and rhetorical dilution of the inborn, receptive, and formerly coherent and universal (!) natural law.
“Renewal and Extension, dogmatically and sacramentally; not the triumph of theologians, procedurally.
Many have already experienced a Eucharistic Revival through Summorum Pontificum.