Are you getting ready to initiate the Elect in your parish at the Easter Vigil? Make sure they (and you) know what they are signing up for. In his book, The People’s Work, Frank Senn says:

The purpose of proclaiming the word and celebrating baptism and the Lord’s Supper is to form a community of priests who will offer a sacrifice of praise and prayer for the life of the world.

He notes that the worship of God is the purpose for which all other things are done in the church and that the mission of the church is to go find more worshipers who will perform true worship.

Is that message getting across to the Elect? Well, yes and no. According to the U.S. bishops’ report on the implementation of the the RCIA, Journey to the Fullness of Life, 54 percent of those who are initiated through the catechumenate process continue to regularly participate in Mass and in parish life after Easter. The good news is that is much higher than the participation rate for the average Catholic. The bad news is almost half of those who go through the process stop participating. While we are doing well, there is lots of room for improvement.

So how is your parish doing?

The Elect are about to join the royal priesthood, and it is time to start getting them used to their royal status. Here are 9 ways to help the Elect enter more fully into their preparation for baptism and Eucharist.

1. Chauffeur them. At a recent Election Rite, acandidate was late for the liturgy because she dropped off her kids—and her godparent—and then went to park the car. She arrived soaked because it was raining. Bestow blessings on the Elect in your community. Be sure their godparents drive them to and from all the rituals of the lenten season and the Triduum.
2. Wine and dine them. The Elect should be in parishioners homes for dinner at least once a week during Lent. And folks in the parish can be delivering hot meals to the homes of the Elect at least a couple times a week. Relieving the Elect of the cooking duties frees them up for the essential prayer and reflection they should be doing.
3. Rehearse the godparents. Don’t burden the new royalty with having to remember all the complex actions of the Election Rite, the Scrutinies, the Holy Saturday Preparation Rites and the Vigil. Put that burden on their godparents, and let the Elect relax and enter into the prayer.
4. Do make them come to all the rites. Royalty do have public duties after all. The duties of the Elect in the lenten season are to enter fully into the dialogue of worship. This is for their own spiritual growth, but just as importantly, it is also for ours. We are reminded of our commitment when we see newcomers taking up the cross.
5. Don’t skip the Holy Saturday Preparation Rites. Make it an hour, a half day, or full day retreat. This is a really important step in the process. There are lots of options to be found at RCIA 185 and following. Adapt what you find there and add in other elements that have worked well for your parish at youth or Cursillo retreats. Invite the whole parish, but “require” the godparents, catechists, and family members to be present.
6. Proclaim a fast. RCIA 185 also says the Elect “should refrain from their usual activities, spend their time in prayer and reflection, and as far as they can, observe a fast.” Remember, this is an extension of the Paschal fast that began on Good Friday. When the royalty fast, of course, so should everyone else. Make sure the whole parish is invited to fast and pray in solidarity with the Elect.
7. Party, party, party. I have been to one too many Vigils that ended with the final blessing and everyone heading home. If the Elect, and the parish, have really been fasting for two days, throw a banquet! Sure, it’s late and everyone is tired. But it’s only once a year. More importantly, it is once in a lifetime for the Elect. Make it night to remember forever.
8. Show up on Easter morning. This is so important for the “new evangelization” that Pope John Paul II talked about. Lots of Catholics only show up on Easter. What will they think if the Elect, still smelling of chrism, show up in their white garments along with hordes of weary revelers who have been celebrating all night long? It will certainly make the once-a-year crowd sit up and take notice of a Catholicism they might have written off as too stodgy.
9. Keep in touch. I am not a big fan of guilting the Elect into showing up for eight more “classes” after Easter, but I do think the godparents ought to be getting them to Mass for every Sunday of Easter. Vacations and trips need to be postponed and rescheduled way in advance to make sure this happens. And, again, parishioners need to be inviting the Elect to their Memorial Day barbecues, Mothers Day parties, and Fishing Opener camping trips.

Have you ever been in love with someone you weren’t supposed to love? Someone your parents or your friends disapproved of?

In the first two paragraphs of today’s Gospel, Jesus does some astounding things.

• He goes to Samaria.
• He walks up to a well where a woman is drawing water.
• He sends off his disciples so he is alone with the woman.
• He speaks to her.
• He does this at noon, when anyone walking by can see.

All of these are very large barriers for a Jewish man to cross in Jesus’ day. His friends clearly disapproved. What does Jesus want so badly that he is willing to engage in such risky behavior?

This story really begins with the wedding at Cana when Jesus reveals himself as the Bridegroom. The Bridegroom is in search of a Bride and he has discovered that the House of Israel only seemed interested in a marriage of convenience. So Jesus stepped out. He went to the part of town he shouldn’t have. He asked out the girl with the reputation. He went to Samaria, across the border, to a place self-respecting Jews did not go.

The very nature of the God is an incessant craving for intimacy. The reason for creation is so God could have an “other” to love. The reason the Son became flesh is so God could feel how we feel, love how we love, want what we want. That God could love us like that seems almost reckless. If God had parents, surely they would not approve.

That reckless love, that intimacy with Jesus, is what Pope John Paul II said catechists are to help people find. If you’ve ever loved someone, you know intimacy is a two way street. You cannot have intimacy all by yourself. Someone has to desire you, to want to be intimate back, to share their life with you. No matter how much we desire Jesus, he desires us more. No matter how much the woman at the well needed Jesus, he needed her more.

In this story, Jesus was reckless in his love. He was willing to cross over physical and social boundaries to get what he needed. He was willing to put up with the questioning and suspicion of his closest disciples to teach them not have such a small love, not to limit their love only to places and people where they feel safe.

The disciples didn’t love the Samaritans. The Samaritans were foreigners who had strange customs and strange foods. They had odd rituals, and weird devotional practices. The disciples were willing to follow Jesus into Samaria, but they didn’t really cross over the boundary. They are like some Americans who go to foreign countries for vacation and get upset when they can’t get eggs and bacon for breakfast. When the disciples went to town to buy food, they probably went to the first century version of McDonalds. It didn’t occur to them to tell people about Jesus while they were there. Who throws pearls before swine after all?

The Woman at the Well, on the other hand, couldn’t wait. She rushed off so fast, she left her water jar, left everything. She ran, totally committed to the love she had discovered. She ran to town to announce the good news. This was the same town the disciples had just returned from. The woman went into the town and returned to the well with hearts to woo. The disciples returned with lunch.

We have Samaritan Women among us today. The Elect are here, asking the same kinds of questions the woman at the well asked. In a moment, we will pray for them that their love remains true, that their commitment is total. We will pray God strengthens all that God loves in them and that they will be healed from all that hinders their love for God.

We can be sure they do love God with a passionate, reckless love that perhaps some people in their lives may not approve of. Their catechists and this community have succeeded in matchmaking them with Jesus, bringing them to that love and intimacy Pope John Paul talked about.

Likewise, we can be sure that Jesus loves them. He loves them, needs them, desires them, wants them as much as he needed the Samaritan woman. He is crossing over their Samarias, sitting at their wells, courting them in broad daylight, not caring who knows that he is crazy in love with them. This Easter Vigil, when the Elect step up to the well of living water, they will become the Bride. Their desire, their need, their thirst for intimacy will be so fully quenched, they will never thirst again.

And we who will be witnesses at this new Cana, at the Easter Vigil’s wedding banquet, we will remember when our own love of Christ was newly in bloom and our own desire was met with overwhelming desire. On that night of overflowing water, we will remember how our baptism quenched all our thirsts. On that night, we will renew our vows, our promise, our total commitment to the love of Christ.

It is a reckless, head over heals kind of love affair we have. It is a love that crosses boundaries and seeks intimacy in places we might not have expected, in places we might not have gone, in people who are not like us, who at first might have seemed foreign and unsafe.

When we read this love story of the Woman at the Well, we hear it differently at different times in our lives. When we are new to love or when we are feeling unlovable, we might imagine ourselves to be the woman, a person thirsting for intimacy, a person parched by the day to day struggles of trying to make sense of life. When we are bored or burnt out or not vibrantly in touch with our faith, we might think we are the disciples, good hearted folks who are a bit clueless and need a little reminding of what it means to be a Catholic and a Christian.

But today, in this place, as we are about to pray for the Elect in our midst, we, the baptized, are like Christ at Cana, at the Wedding Banquet, to whom the Mother of God says, “They have no wine.” In Christ, we can turn water into wine, loneliness and isolation into intimacy and communion. With Christ, we can cross the boundaries of places we might otherwise be afraid to go. Through Christ, we can sit at the well of those who are not like us in so many ways, but are like us in the one way that matters. We all thirst for that deep intimacy that only the Bridegroom can give.

The boundary breaking, intimate, deep-as-a-well love Jesus showed the woman freed her. The love welled up in her to the point she couldn’t contain it. She had to share it. She herself became a well, a fountain overflowing with Christ’s love. She became like Jesus, crossing boundaries, finding those searching for love and telling them to come and see.

When we were plunged into the waters of life, we also became like Jesus, seeking intimacy with all the world, especially in the places that might seem risky and out of bounds—in our enemies, in those who are foreign to us, in those who would persecute us.

We when eat and drink at this wedding banquet every Sunday, we become what we eat. We become the love of Christ for the world.

Do we believe that? Can we imagine it? If so, let’s leave our little water jars and our small love behind and go out to love with astounding, reckless abandon.

Okay, that’s a little strong. But if your lenten catechesis for the elect looks a lot like the catechesis that was going on during the period of the catechumenate, something is amiss. The rite is pretty clear. If you have your RCIA handy (or maybe even if you don’t; go get it) open to paragraph 139:

[Lent] is a period of more intense spiritual preparation, consisting more in interior reflection than in catechetical instruction….

If, in Lent, you have both elect (who will be baptized this Easter) and catechumens (who won’t), you’ll have to do a little bi-locating. The catechumens will need to continue their grounding in and exploration of the content outlined in paragraph 75 of the RCIA. So, at the dismissal time during Mass, you’ll need two catechists—one to go with the elect and one to go with the catechumens.

While our ministry to the catechumens remains crucial during the lenten season, our concern for the elect in paramount. Check out paragraph 121:

The election, marked with a rite of such solemnity, is the focal point of the Church’s concern for the catechumens.

All that we have been doing with the catechumens is to get them to this point—the point at which the bishop declares them to be candidates for baptism. At that moment, it is pretty much a done deal. It’s like getting engaged—so engaged that you’ve sent out the invitations, rented the hall, and booked the flight for the honeymoon. There really is no turning back now unless something really drastic and unforeseeable happens.

So lenten catechesis is not about “catching up” on stuff that got missed in the catechumenate. It is about preparing in a soul-filled, prayerful way for a life of joy—and a life of sacrifice.

What catechesis of the elect looks like

Well, then, what does the actual lenten catechesis look like? It looks like what is happening in their lives. The major events for the elect over the 40 days of Lent are going to be the three scrutinies on the third, fourth, and fifth Sundays of Lent. Lenten catechesis for the elect will ask three questions, each with a strength and weakness side to it:

1. What have you most drunk in of Christ? What do you continue to thirst for?
2. What have you seen that you never saw before? What do you remain blind to?
3. What is most life-giving in your new intimacy with Christ? What is still dead that needs resurrection?

Structure the 40 days as a retreat for the elect centered on these questions and you will have answered the challenge of the rite “to uncover, then heal all that is weak, defective, or sinful in the hearts of the elect” and “then strengthen all that is upright, strong, and good” (141).

I’m writing this on the First Sunday of Lent. Today is typically a hectic day in many catechumenate ministries. The candidates for election are stressed and may show up late for the parish Mass and the Rite of Sending. The catechumenate director or liturgist has a thousand details to attend to. There are friends and families of the candidates wandering around, perhaps sitting in the wrong pews. The pastor got an emergency call right before last week’s rehearsal and may be doing the rite “blind” today. And then, after it’s all over, you’ve got to get everyone together again at the cathedral for the Rite of Election, find the right seats, remember how the ritual goes, and not let your nervousness show. It can be like herding cats in a rainstorm.

So today might seem like an odd day to call to our attention the vision of the rite. On the other hand what better time than Lent to refocus and renew ourselves in what the RCIA—and the Spirit of God—call us to as catechumenate ministers?

Today, all those who will write their names in the Book of Life will move to a new stage in their journey. In a sense, you and the catechumenate team are handing them over to their godparents who will be their primary spiritual guides from now on. You might be thinking the godparents just flew in yesterday and have no clue how to continue the formation of the elect. Nevertheless, your discernment that these catechumens are now competent to live the Gospel means they are moving beyond your maternal care. It is time to look forward, to the future, to what the Spirit is asking of us.

I’d like to encourage you to look forward to Easter Sunday. If stress or fatigue or insecurity ever causes you to question what it is we do and why we do it, look forward to the day St. Augustine describes as the day the newly baptized “who a little while ago were called competentes—are now called infantes. They were called competentes because they were thumping in their mother’s womb, begging to be born; now they are called infantes because they—who had first been born to the world—are now born to Christ.” (Harmless, 314)

Augustine, weary from the Vigil the night before, would often drastically abbreviate his usual three-hour homily and simply point to the neophytes standing in their white robes. If you want to see the scriptures enfleshed, he would tell them, look there. Augustine made clear to his parishioners that the neophytes were a living enfleshment of the Word.

The vision of the RCIA is that day, that moment, that miracle, when we can point to the newly baptized and say, “There is Christ made flesh.”

When you are planning for the scrutinies, be sure to move the Elect out into the midst of the assembly. The goal is to strive for both visibility and intimacy.

• If you only have one candidate for initiation this year, the action of the scrutiny should take place where it is most visible—usually at the head of the center aisle. The Elect would face the assembly.
• If you have two candidates, place the second about half way down the center aisle.
• If you have three, place the third in a side aisle, and so on.
• When it is time for the rite, the godparents move the Elect into their designated places.
• It is very important for the godparents to keep a hand on the Elect throughout the entire rite.
• When it is time for the laying on of hands, the presider would walk solemnly to each candidate and press his hands on top of each head.
• You might adapt the rite to have the director of the catechumenate follow behind and do the same.
• Similarly, each godparent might lay hands on his or her candidate as well.
• Note, the laying on of hands is a gesture of exorcism, not absolution.

Do not rehearse with the Elect. It is up to the god- parents to guide the Elect.

The key to a reverent and dignified celebration is rehearsal. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

BUT, do not rehearse with the Elect. It is up to the godparents to be well prepared and know how to guide the Elect through the rite. Their care for the Elect in the rite is symbolic of their commitment as godparents.