Throughout the week I get calls
to my office inquiring if RCIA has started in our parish. The truth is that RCIA never stops in our
parish, thankfully. Anyone interested in learning about what it means to follow
Jesus and share in the sacraments of the Catholic Church are welcome to join
our gathering called “Inquiry” throughout the year and not wait until “RCIA
begins”. These types of calls and others remind me how important RCIA is to our parish and how much
education our community needs on the RCIA process.
When I sit down with a family who
inquires about the requirements to become Catholic, I like to begin explaining
that it requires a process of conversion and a commitment to apprentice what it means to be active in our Catholic community. The Church looks at this
process with an end goal that does not stop at the Easter Vigil, which is when
potentially they can receive their sacraments. Instead our focus is that phase
which “empowers us for the mission” of the Church; a phase we refer to as “Mystagogy”.
Mystagogy is that time in our
lives after having been fully initiated into the life of the Church, where we
attempt to live the mysteries of Jesus’ suffering, dying and rising in our own
lives. We are called to be in a
continual conversion experience as Catholics, and this is what the
Mystagological experience is about. All initiated Catholics are to be living their
own unique mystagogy phase: being in constant state of prayer, examination of
conscience, of sharing their gifts with the Catholic community and most
importantly in participating in the Catholic Mass each Sunday.
If we are aware that this is
where we are headed with the individual or family, it seems logical that as RCIA catechists our mission to preparing the person
has much to do with “demonstrating” how to live out our faith and not just “instructing”
about our Catholic faith.
Hence, the RCIA is not a “program”, which
suggests a beginning and an end point, filled with learning and memorizing all kinds of important Catholic doctrine spread out in the middle. Instead
it is a process, which involves a more holistic and gradual approach to
catechesis. The goal and measure as we move along our faith journey with our RCIA group
is to be discerning what God's will is for us and sharing with the individual how to discern for “changed hearts
and changed lives”.
A person is not deemed "ready" based solely upon age or grade or how many lessons they
have attained or how much knowledge they have accumulated….the person is ready to become a fully intitiated Catholic
when they have experienced a change of attitude and a change of heart towards
how they intend to live in God’s Grace.
The powerful aspect of the RCIA
is that when the process is celebrated along the way with grace filled rites at the Sunday Mass, planned out thoughtfully, and entered into with open hearts, it reminds the entire community of its important role as witness
and our Catholic call to be evangelizing at all times not just in word, but by action too. The
individuals who are in the RCIA process remind us each time we are all present at Mass
celebrating a rite that we are all to be active in our apostolic mission,
to daily examine our own hunger for God’s word and for the Eucharist. The RCIA process provides the parish an ideal opportunity for
transformation of the entire community.
In its essence, RCIA is a ongoing
conversion experience that is to be seen as a segment of the larger journey of
faith. It says that our spiritual journey will never end in our lifetime, we
are called to continual spiritual examination and repentance and healing. It also makes us all aware that we are all
part of the journey, as Church we are a pilgrim people and we must journey
together! The journey begins long before
the person seeking baptism reaches our parish and it continues long after the
person takes root into the Christian Catholic community at baptism.
Thanks be to God that RCIA is always starting in our parish! Come and see!
No comments:
Post a Comment