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Mystagogy Reading: The Cross: Word and Sacrament


Reading The Cross: Word and Sacrament is a continuation of my reading the Bibliography from Stratford Caldecott's The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God as personal mystagogy.

Adrienne von Speyr's The Cross: Word and Sacrament (Ignatius Press 1983) is a profound reflection on Jesus’ Last Words after he is Crucified. She connects each saying from the depths of his suffering sacrifice to one of the Sevens Sacraments. These reflections connect the Paschal Mystery to the sacramental life and mission of the Church bringing new fruit to meditation on both.

The book is very short (63 pages) and could be read in a single sitting, but each chapter deserves at least a day of reflection and prayer each. I see myself returning to this time and time again in the week leading up to Good Friday, devoting each day to the sacramental fruits of these mysteries. With an RCIA group sufficiently Catechized, I would also consider using this as the primary guiding text for a Holy Saturday retreat before the Easter Vigil as well ... a kick start to their season of Mystagogy.

This book Caldecott cited as a prime inspiration for his Seven Sacraments which itself set me on this whole adventure of focused mystagogical reading. Of the works cited in his Bibliography which is guiding my reading, this is the work that's given me the key to unlocking what I'm hoping for: finding a unity among the elements of Faith. As to the compartmentalized separate aspects of the Catholic Faith—scripture, doctrine, basic theology, morality, prayer, (Creed, Code, Cult) etc—I feel my intellectual grasp is fair to middlin'. But they tend to feel disconnected. That's not true, they feel connected like roads between cities on a map (I can show you how to get from this scripture citation to this moral teaching) but not connected like the members of a Body. Caldecott and von Speyr are starting to give me some arteries and ligaments ...

This book isn't a road map of scriptural source of each sacrament's origin, it's how these seven last words of Jesus are living expressions of the sacraments in the climatic moment of his saving mission. The reflections are then heart-centered not intellect-centered, and thus, for me, approach Wisdom in contrast to Apologetics, which is how I feel most of my reading and understanding has been focused.

Two ideas from this book really grabbed me; the first was this passage:


which with my recent addition of the Examen into my regular spiritual practices rang true as what I'm  hoping to accomplish through such practice. The second was relating Christ's forsaken-ness to the Sacrament of Holy Orders which I want to explore more in-depth in a later post.

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