Sermon Tone Analysis

… Mario F. Lages Mario F. Lages argued that early Jerusalem practice, too, knew an original 3-week Lenten preparation period of catechumens for paschal baptism.

This lectionary includes a canon of Lenten readings with concluding psalmody assigned to Wednesday and Friday gatherings at Sion and a list of 19 catechetical biblical readings assigned to Lenten catechesis, which parallel the pre-baptismal catechesis of Cyril of Jerusalem.

Lages also pointed to the introductory rubric in the 9th or 10th-century Armenian rite of baptism and to a pertinent rubric in the 5th-century Georgian Lectionary.

The Armenian baptismal rubric reads in part:

The canon of Baptism when they make a Chrisitan.

Before which it is not right to admit him into church.

But he shall have hands laid on beforehand, 3 weeks or more before the baptism, in time sufficient for him to learn from the Wardapet [Instructor] both the faith and the baptism of the Church.

from Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson

The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity

Chp 11, p. 14, para #2

rch.