A Paschal Mystery
When the American bishops produced their multi-year plan for a National Eucharistic Revival in 2022, there was only one passing reference to the concept of the Paschal Mystery in their founding statement. I was dumbfounded. Only one! I’ve been wondering ever since why they would abandon the language and concept of Paschal Mystery, and I think I’ve finally figured it out. They must have concluded that it wouldn’t serve their purpose, which was a return to the Eucharistic piety that predated the Second Vatican Council.
The prominence of the Paschal Mystery is one of the hallmarks of Vatican II, and it has not diminished in importance since that time. Pope Benedict XVI, reflecting on the fruits of the Second Vatican Council in a 2013 address to the clergy of Rome, remarked:
There were several of these: above all, the Paschal Mystery as the center of what it is to be Christian—and therefore of the Christian life, the Christian year, the Christian seasons, expressed in Eastertide and on Sunday which is always the day of the Resurrection. Again and again we begin our time with the Resurrection, our encounter with the Risen one, and from that encounter with the Risen one we go out into the world.