Parishes prepare candidates, catechumens for sacraments

By Andrew Junker, The Catholic Sun
December 21, 2006

The room doesn’t look like much. It’s a cafeteria filled with long, white tables and rusty, metallic chairs arranged in a lazy half-circle.

Every Monday night, however, the room becomes the most important place to be for a certain group of men and women.

They are the 27 candidates (those already baptized) and catechumens (those yet to be baptized) who will enter the Church at St. Francis Xavier Parish this coming Easter.

“I’ve seen so many people come through here and watched them change,” said Marcus Leach, director of the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults at St. Francis Xavier. “You see that movement of the Holy Spirit and it’s just an amazing thing.”

RCIA provides formation for those who wish to enter into full communion with the Church. Across the Valley, parishes began the formal classes at the beginning of Advent, though Leach is quick to point out, they’re not too formal.

“We’re not trained theologians,” he said of himself and his core team of volunteer formation leaders.

The program is more of a “spiritual growth process, to get them to have that relationship with Christ and to know themselves more in that process,” he explained.

The classes begin with a prayer and reflection led by one of the core team members. Then, the group splits into smaller units to “break open the Word.”

These smaller groups read the Scriptures from the previous Sunday aloud, asking questions and discussing the readings for over an hour.

“The questions they ask kind of remind you of children who are inquisitive about things,” said Joe Petrosino, who has been a core team member for four years. “I find that very enlightening. In our Scriptures, that’s how we’re supposed to focus on things as well.”

One small group discussed who the prophet Baruch was. He was the writer of the first reading under conversation, which is not included in Protestant Bibles.

The discussion then moved to practical applications of the Gospel passage.

Candidate Kendall Liga said the small discussion groups are her favorite part of the classes.

“It’s about getting more viewpoints on Scripture that I’ve read my whole life, but which has new meaning for me now,” she said.

She was raised Baptist and married a fallen-away cradle Catholic. This past year, just before her mother-in-law died, she asked Liga to get her son back in the Church.

“I think bringing him in has brought me in,” she said. “That’s been my road.”

The group took a break after the biblical discussion to drink hot chocolate and eat leftover doughnuts that weren’t sold after Mass the day before.

Many of them have been coming here since the inquiry phase a few months ago and are getting to know each other well.

For the second half of the night, the group sat in a semi-circle for a multi-media presentation on St. John the Baptist, who was featured in the previous Sunday’s Gospel.

Leach said the combination of discussion and instruction works well. The class is organized around the Scripture readings throughout the year, which can dovetail nicely into presentations on the Church’s teachings, he said.

The presentation on John the Baptist quickly segued into a discussion of sin.

“Why was Jesus baptized if he was sinless?” one candidate asked.

“Are suicides allowed to have a Catholic funeral?” another questioned.

“What’s the deal with purgatory?”

This query was tabled until the next meeting due to time constraints.

“They always come up with more questions,” Leach smiled.

The core team leaders said it’s important for them not to overwhelm the candidates and catechumens with a slew of information all at once.

“It’s their time,” Petrosino said. “We want to answer their questions as easy as possible, so they can understand it that much more.”

For Liga, the process couldn’t be working better.

“I think this is a great program. It’s really enriched my life,” she said, welling up.