What is the Paschal Mystery?

The term

The Latin word paschalis derives from the Hebrew Pesach (Passover). The Paschal Mystery is therefore literally "the mystery of the Passover" : the new and definitive Passover of Christ, in which he passed from death to life and won for humanity the redemption from sin and death. The Catholic Church speaks of one Paschal Mystery encompassing four moments:

1. The Passion (the suffering and death on the Cross).
2. The Death (the moment of giving up the Spirit on Calvary).
3. The Resurrection (the rising from the dead on the third day).
4. The Glorification (the Ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost).

The four are inseparable. They are not four separate events to be considered apart, but the four phases of one saving act of Christ.¹

Why one mystery, not four

The Catholic theological insistence on the unity of the Paschal Mystery is doctrinally significant. The early Christian temptation, repeated in various forms across history, was to separate the Cross from the Resurrection and to treat one as more important than the other:

• To overemphasize the Cross alone is to fall into a piety of suffering without resurrection: the Christian life as a long Good Friday with no Easter morning.
• To overemphasize the Resurrection alone is to risk minimizing the Cross: a triumphalism that bypasses the suffering through which the redemption was actually wrought.

The Catholic doctrine of the Paschal Mystery insists that both belong together. The Cross is unintelligible without the Resurrection that follows it; the Resurrection is empty without the Cross from which it springs. This unity is the deep reason why the Sacred Triduum is treated by the Catholic rubrics as one continuous liturgy rather than three separate days.

The Paschal Mystery in the sacraments

Catholic sacramental theology teaches that every sacrament is, in some way, a participation in the Paschal Mystery:

• Baptism is "a being buried with Christ in death" so as to "rise with him to new life" (Romans 6:3-4).
• The Eucharist is the sacramental presence on the altar of the same redemptive act of Christ on Calvary.
• Confession applies to the soul the forgiveness won by Christ on the Cross.
• The Anointing of the Sick unites the suffering of the sick person with the Passion of Christ.
• Holy Orders configures the priest to Christ the High Priest who offered himself.
• Matrimony signifies the union of Christ and the Church, sealed in the Cross.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: "Christ, having died once for all, no longer dies; death no longer has dominion over him; he lives forever in the glory of the Father, with whom and in whom he has gone before us. From this all the sacraments derive their power" (CCC 1085).²

The Paschal Mystery in the liturgical year

Every Mass of every Sunday is a celebration of the Paschal Mystery. The annual liturgical year is structured to make the Paschal Mystery present in successive aspects: Christmas and Epiphany celebrate the Incarnation that prepared the Mystery; Lent prepares the faithful for the climactic celebration; the Sacred Triduum is the high feast of the Mystery itself; the Easter season, running fifty days through Pentecost, draws out the implications of the Mystery for the life of the Church.

The Second Vatican Council, in Sacrosanctum Concilium (the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 1963), placed the Paschal Mystery at the center of the entire liturgical reform: the liturgy is, above all, the celebration of the Paschal Mystery, by which Christ continues his saving work in the Church.³

Sources

Footnotes

1. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 571 to 658, on the Paschal Mystery (the entire central section of Christology). ↩

2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1085, on the Paschal Mystery as the source of all the sacraments. ↩

3. Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium (December 4, 1963), nn. 5 to 8 and 102 to 111. ↩