Archive for the ‘RCIA’ Category

John Allen Jr., over at NCR Café, makes the point that, while local newspapers cover things as routine as city council meetings and high school sports events, they seldom report the powerful faith stories that take place in our churches every week. Using the Lexis-Nexis database, which indexes virtually all major print and broadcast media [...]

QCan you take RCIA classes online? A“RCIA” is an acronym for “Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.” It is first of all a rite and therefore cannot be done online. Sometimes we think of becoming a Christian as simply a matter of making an intellectual assent to a body of beliefs. This notion leads us [...]

Imagine this announcement in your parish. “Next Sunday we are going to celebrate the Rite of Acceptance with several catechumens.” Now in your mind’s eye, look out at the assembly. Is there a collective eye-roll? Or are they whipping out their Blackberries to cancel golf games and trips to see Grandma so they can be [...]

This is going to shock you. I don’t like to do it, but somebody has to tell you. There are a few of you out there who are “doing the RCIA” without having read the book! What book? The RCIA. The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. The book. How people learn how to do [...]

QI’m trying to find some sort of brochure or flyer to be able to hand out to anyone who’s interested, to explain what RCIA is. Do you know where I could find something? ASt. Anthony Messenger Press publishes a “Catholic Update” that is just the thing you are looking for. It is titled “An New [...]

Sometimes a sense of futility creeps upon us. We despair that “they don’t come back for mystagogy.” Or we fret that “we can’t find enough sponsors.” We bemoan the lack of participation among the members of the assembly. And now the diocese wants us to run the catechumenate “year round” when we are already stretched [...]

These approaches to preaching mystagogically are defined by Jan Michael Joncas in Forum Essay, Number 4: Preaching the Rites of Christian Initiation (Chicago, Illinois: Liturgy Training Publications, 1994) 95-117. The five approaches outlined by Joncas are: hallowing cosmic symbols; exploring anthropological patterns; celebrating biblical history; analyzing beliefs and behaviors; and revealing the future present. According [...]

In the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, only two pages of texts are given to describe the period of mystagogy and post-baptismal catechesis. Below are the five main things you need to know about mystagogy during this period of the initiation process (from RCIA 244-247): Mystagogy and mystagogical preaching leads the neophytes and the [...]

Below is part of the unformatted text from a bulletin insert that you can download, print, and copy for FREE for use in your parishes to help you catechize about mystagogy. Please include the author and copyright information on any copies you make. Get the fully-formatted ready-to-copy bulletin insert (pdf) here. Mystagogy: Savoring the Mystery [...]

The content of faith is the content of my mother’s or any mother’s life. That is because faith happens in and through our daily life. What we do on Sunday is simply one expression of our faith. We need to connect the messy un-”holy” events of daily life with God and all the things we [...]