Archives par mot-clé : Faith

LECUIT JEAN-BAPTISTE : THE INITIATION TEST IN RITES AND CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT

Initiation rites most often pertain to adolescence. They follow a scheme of death and rebirth, which entails a physical test. The Oedipus complex and its reactivation in adolescence are key to its interpretation. The sacramental rites said to be those of Christian initiation have this same initiatory structure. The testing part of it is absent, but may be found in the believer’s existence, insofar as this is where what is inaugurated by the sacraments of initiation is deployed. Far from spontaneously satisfying infantile expectations, Christian development calls for a deep transformation of desire, a demanding disillusionment. Here we can speak of an initiatory test, corresponding to the passage, which can always be deepened, from infantile belief to filial subjectivity. This transformation follows a dynamic analogous to adolescent subjectivation.