This article discusses the mystagogical attention within contemporary religious education, by describing the developed conceptualization of mystagogy. In the first part, the article relates the characteristics of pre-Christian, Christian and contemporary post-Christian/post-secular mystagogy to their respective historical contexts. Furthermore, it clarifies how contemporary mystagogal religious education both faces and opposes present-day tendencies, such as the neglect of church life within religious education and the instrumental use of religion and religious expressions. The second part of the article clarifies how meetings with catholic communities not only contribute to a less instrumental perspective of religion but also evoke the students’ receptiveness to fragility, refractory and otherness in their own lives and in the lives of others. The article concludes with some thoughts about the way encounters with lived catholic faith might be of interest to religious education in school, while this education is not aimed at religious initiation.