PARISH BULLETIN: Liturgy Checklist
Lent Without Guilt: The Mystagogical Promise of Scrutinies
Edward Foley |  Spring 2009

The scrutinies of the rites of initiation provide an opportunity in Lent for all to experience healing and purification.

For many this is not a favored liturgical season. While droves of Catholics will plan on getting to church early for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve or hope they are not left to standing room at one of the Masses for Easter morning, few of us will similarly strategize for an early arrival on the First Sunday of Lent. Rather, the liturgical Scrooges among us are wont to say, “Lent—bah, humbug.” Who needs this season of sin, unhappiness, and general depression? ’Tis the season to be guilty, the season to be shriven, the season to be gloomy, and especially the season to do penance. Rather than the generous Spirit symbols from Pentecost, the life-giving metaphors of Easter, or the soul-stirring images from Christmas, Lent sometimes presents an image of God some liken to a kind of divine Marquis de Sade, who created this season so that we would suffer while God receives some kind of sadistic pleasure in watching us go without.

So we have learned to play the Lenten game with God…giving up but not giving up. We quit smoking, cut out the candy, decide to cut back on the alcohol and renew our commitment to exercise or take up some other “penitential practice” that is usually better for us than for our relationship with God. It is a practice so widespread that it has generated its own genre of humor, shared by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. One of my favorites goes something like this:

A stranger walks into a bar, in a small town in Colorado. He orders three beers and proceeds to drink from one after another until they are all depleted. After courteously thanking the bartender, and depositing his tip on the bar, he leaves.

This goes on day after day until, after some weeks, the bartender finally asks him, “Why the ritual? Why the three beers drunk simultaneously?”

The man replies that he has two brothers, one back in Ireland, the other now in Australia. When they parted this past year they promised each other that every evening, wherever they were in the world, they would sit down with each other and share a beer to sustain their fraternal ties.
This ritual goes on for over five months and the “three-beer-guy” becomes a local celebrity.
Then one night, he walks into the bar, and orders only two beers. A hush falls over the crowd. The locals intuitively grasp the sadness of the occasion and speak to each other in muted tones. Finally the bartender, approaches the Irishmen to extend his condolences. “So,” he asks, “which one of your brothers has died?”

Silence blankets the room as the Irishman replies, “None ... it’s just that I decided to give up drinking beer for Lent!”

Scrutinies Reconsidered

While most of us are not so crass, there is a little “three-beer-guy” in many of us. Yet, for believers and pastoral leadership, for presiders and preachers, for musicians and mystagogues, the church’s liturgy offers a different path in the renewed Lenten rituals that stretch before us these coming weeks. By “renewed” I am not announcing some fresh adaptation recently announced by Rome for this coming Lent. Rather, I am referencing that reconceptionalization of Lent that was announced in the revised lectionary of 1970, in the various editions of the renewed Roman Missals that have appeared since 1969, and particularly in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults first promulgated in 1972 and approved with adaptations for the church in the United States in 1988.

While this might seem like old hat to some, it is a hat that much of the church in the United States does not regularly wear, and many have not even tried it on. Sure, we read the appointed readings in the new three-year lectionary cycle, and pray the new prayers in the sacramentary. Some of us have even witnessed that liturgical rarity, actually participating in a Eucharist in which those who have been elected for full initiation in the church have been prayed over, experienced the laying on of hands, and even been dismissed from the assembly at the end of the liturgy of the word. Yes, some of us have actually participated in the “scrutinies,” which are presumed to be an ordinary part of the third, fourth and fifth Sundays of Lent if there are adult candidates for Easter initiation.

Ironically, however, this ritual key to the whole of the reshaping of the Lenten season after Vatican II is far—dare I say “very far”?—from the experience of most Catholics in this country. One could argue that this is understandable, because many parishes do not have adult candidates for Easter initiation, and so there is no rhyme or reason for celebrating these rites. Before I demur, let me first suggest that even in places where the rituals are celebrated they may not be woven effectively into the ritual life of a community. For example, in one high profile worshipping community in which I was an occasional guest presider, I consulted with the liturgy coordinator about the liturgical planning for the third Sunday of Lent for which I was to preach and preside. I knew there were adult candidates for Easter sacraments, but did not think that the scrutinies were to be enacted at the Eucharist at which I was preaching and presiding. Yet, I wanted to know during which of the other Sunday Eucharists they were occurring so I could appropriately reference them in the homily. The liturgist’s response: “What are scrutinies?”

Ecclesial Acts

Based on ancient liturgical precedents, scrutinies are a series of ritual moments outlined in the current rite of Christian initiation of adults directed at those who have been elected for Easter sacraments. Understood as rituals of purification and enlightenment, the rite instructs that they “are meant to uncover, then heal all that is weak, defective, or sinful in the hearts of the elect; to bring out, then strengthen all that is upright, strong, and good” (no. 141).

Like all rituals, however, there is more to the scrutinies than this first and obvious meaning. Scrutinies, like every other liturgy of the church, are ecclesial acts. This means that they not only happen in a church building but are acts by the whole church for the whole church. Thus, they are not simply for the elect and those in close geographic or spiritual proximity to the elect such as their sponsors, but are also for all of the baptized. Scrutinies are precisely meant to be celebrated in the midst of the Sunday assembly so that they can be of benefit for the whole of the assembly. An ancient maxim of liturgical theology is that sacraments “effect what they signify.” That effect, however, is not like some laser guided missile destined only for those elected to be in the Spirit’s direct line of fire. Consequently, the assembly present for the scrutinies is not some holy audience, cheering on the elect as they encounter the Holy Spirit. Rather, Vatican II’s call to full, conscious, and active participation is a liturgical invitation to transformation for all the faithful at all the liturgies, and not just for those rituals that seem relevant to one’s personal disposition or state of life.

Ordinations are not just for those to be ordained, but are a sacramental calling to ministry, prayer, and holiness for the whole church, even while the elect are ordained for particular modes of ministry, prayer, and holiness. Marriage ceremonies are not only for the bride and groom, the wedding party, or the parents who often provide the emotional and financial support to pull off such an event. They too are calls to all the baptized to live the type of generative love that mirrors Christ’s love for the church, whether they be single, celibate, widowed, or already married. So too these scrutiny rituals have something to say to those already baptized, especially those of us baptized as children who never walked the walk of adult initiation.

Prepatory Time

The General Norms for the Liturgical Year and Calendar describe the season of Lent as a preparatory time for the elect, but also a preparatory time for the faithful “who recall their baptism and do penance in preparation for Easter” (no. 27). The scrutinies hold potential for both of these groups. To have their intended outcome they must be effectively and publicly celebrated. These are not rituals to be confined to private gatherings of elect and sponsors as they journey through Lent. Instead they need to occupy the sanctuary, highlighting the dramatic transformation required of full initiation, and challenging those of us who already made that sometimes long forgotten journey to take seriously our baptismal renewal as the core of Lent.

Scrutinies also need to be preached about, and their dual dynamic of healing and strengthening cracked open in all of its mystagogical promise. Such preaching is necessary in helping the community comprehend that scrutinies are not simply about our individual call to holiness or personal Lenten journeys, but about being church. In the words of the Rite of Penance, we are a church that “is holy but always in need of purification.” The scrutinies are important ritual enactments affirming such holiness and offering such purification. For a church damaged by scandal, abuse, and division, the scrutinies are one of the most apt liturgical moments in the entire church year for ritualizing our common call to holiness and corporate need for purification.

Furthermore, the church’s liturgy, like the church itself, is not for its own sake but is to serve God’s mission to the world, which the Gospel of John proclaimed to be so beloved by God that we were sent the Only-Begotten (Jn 3:16). Our world is a place of holiness and great generosity and joy; we are also constantly reminded that it is a place that cries out for unending purification and healing. In a world filled with war, a nation marked by greed and selfishness, and a society marred by racism and multiple other ills, scrutinies are an appropriate ritual gesture for the baptized, who not only have to live in this world, but are called to love it and collaborate with God’s Spirit in transforming this world into God’s reign.

A Modest Suggestion

If you do not have elect—the ordinary focus of these rituals—in your faith community, I would suggest that the scrutinies still hold promise for the Lenten journey. Besides their appropriateness for Lenten preaching, their intercessory litanies, as well as prayers of exorcism and blessing, could be the basis for brief but effective rituals after the homily. Inviting the baptized to stand and experience the scrutinies adapted for local use, after a well-shaped homily that exploited their mystagogical potential, could add both freshness and depth to your Lenten rituals. They could also prepare the community for that wondrous day when the elect are in your midst, and allow the community to experience such enlightenment and purification in its fullest form.

The Rev. Edward Foley, OFM Cap, is on the faculty of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.