Directing Lent toward Easter baptism - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, March 2, 2001 by Richard P. McBrien

Reforms from Pius XII, Vatican 17 restored connection

During the first three centuries, most Christians prepared for Easter by fasting for only two or three days. In some places, the paschal fast, as it was then known, was extended to the entire week before Easter, now called Holy Week.

In Rome the Lenten season lasted for three weeks, and its main purpose was to prepare catechumens for baptism at Easter. By the fourth century, the Roman Lent was extended to 40 days, the length of Jesus' fast in the desert. But it was still viewed as a preparation for Easter and for the baptism of new Christians.

In the fifth and sixth centuries, when infant baptism became far more common than adult baptism, the connection between Lent and Easter began to fade. Lent was gradually transformed into a time of prayer and penance, modeled on a 40-day, post-Epiphany fast popular among monks, in imitation of the fasting and penance practiced by Jesus.

It was not until the reform of the rites of Holy Week by Pope Pius XII in 1956, and the renewal of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, mandated by the Second Vatican Council and initiated in the early 1970s, that the connection was restored between Lent and the baptismal celebration at the Easter Vigil.

Before the reform of the Holy Week liturgies, the only religious service on the day before Easter, known as Holy Saturday, was conducted very early in the morning. Because of the length and complexity of the ceremony, which included extensive readings from scripture in Latin, relatively few parishioners and a few unlucky altar boys were in attendance.

For Catholics at this time, the high point of the week was Good Friday, which, according to their catechism theology, commemorated the event by which Christ redeemed us. By contrast, Jesus' resurrection from the dead was understood as the reward bestowed on him by his father for having endured the passion and death on the cross. It also served an apologetical purpose, providing an irrefutable proof of Jesus' divinity.

Because of major developments in the liturgical movement and in Catholic biblical scholarship in the 1940s and '50s, our theological perception of the resurrection began to change substantially, and with it our understanding of the place of Easter in the church's liturgical year.

Once again, Lent came to be seen and experienced as a season of preparation for Easter -- preparation not just of individuals but of the whole community of faith. With the restored Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, Lent served anew as the "home-stretch," as it were, of the long process of initiation of new converts into full membership in the church.

On the first Sunday of Lent there is the formal enrollment of the names of the catechumens, known also as the rite of election. It ratifies the catechumens' readiness for the sacraments of initiation (baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist) and provides an opportunity for them to express their will to receive these sacraments.

There follows a period of purification and enlightenment, embracing the third, fourth and fifth Sundays of Lent, in which catechumens are encouraged to purify their minds and hearts from temptation and sin, and to advance in their union with Christ.

The process reaches its climax in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil itself, but does not end there. A "suitable period" of post-baptismal catechesis, known as mystagogy (derived from a Greek word, meaning "to teach a doctrine," or "to instruct into the mysteries"), continues the new convert's instruction on the Christian moral life, the sacraments, the Trinity and prayer.

Although it is almost 30 years since the restoration of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and some 45 years since the reform of the Holy Week liturgies, there are many in the church who continue to regard Lent in less traditional and less liturgically appropriate ways.

For them, Lent remains a season devoted to prayer and penance, but without explicit reference to baptism, to the Easter Vigil or to their own responsibility for nurturing the new Christians' faith-development and participation in the church's sacramental and ministerial life.

For too many Catholics, Lent is still primarily, if not exclusively, a time for personal asceticism and private devotions: giving up sweets and various forms of entertainment or attending daily Mass.

Few assumptions are wider of the theological mark, however, than the belief that the Mass is a devotional exercise, like the Stations of the Cross, that one attends as a form of personal sacrifice. The Eucharist is a communal celebration, not a penance.

Just as Lent is directed toward baptism, so baptism, like all the sacraments, is directed toward the Eucharist.

Fr. Richard McBrien is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.