How the Early Church Spent Lent and Easter, Preparing for and Receiving the Sacraments

This talk, given at the start of Lent, was designed to show people how the early Church prepared for and received the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist, throughout Lent and Easter. In this talk Andrew Wood specifically looks at some of the writings of a very early Church Father, St Cyril of Jerusalem (315-387AD).

Cyril has left us twenty-four lectures that he delivered c. 350 A.D. These lectures were given in Jerusalem to people who were seeking to be baptised at the Easter Vigil. Cyril would begin preparing people for baptism by giving his first lecture, known as the ‘Pro-Catechesis Lecture’ to these people while in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where tradition holds was the place of Jesus’ burial and subsequent resurrection. He would deliver this lecture on Ash Wednesday, at the start of the forty days of Lent in preparation for Easter.

After this initial lecture Cyril would deliver his ‘Lenten Catechetical Lectures’ everyday throughout Lent. With each lecture he would take people to the very places and sites in and around Jerusalem where Jesus himself had been, each site corresponding to the content of the lecture he would deliver. After receiving baptism at the Easter Vigil, Cyril would deliver to them what were called the ‘Mystagogical Lectures’ throughout Easter Week. These lectures were designed to show the newly baptised, or ‘neophytes,’ what had happened to them when they received the three sacraments of initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist.

This talk is a most beautiful exposition of the profound way in which the early Church saw their reception of these sacraments and how they saw this experience as a deep, meaningful encounter with the risen Jesus. This talk will definitely enrich the way you see and receive the sacraments too.

Cover artwork: 

Mosaic of the Baptism of Christ

Listen to a Sample of this Talk