You know who they are. They’re the ones who keep coming back week after week long after the Easter Vigil and Pentecost are over. They light up anytime someone mentions the RCIA or the catechumenate or becoming Catholic. They want to be sponsors even before they’ve gotten the Chrism smell off their pillow case.

They’re the neophyte evangelist, those newly-initiated who are not only living breathing proof of the resurrection but also walking billboards for the RCIA. They are your greatest fans and your number one supporters.

The RCIA process is not a one-way street that shapes only the catechumen into a disciple. It’s a mutual formation in the life of Christ that changes both the catechumen and the parish. That mutual relationship is evident when a neophyte feels called to share his experience of transformation with others. Essentially, this neophyte is doing faith-sharing, exactly what the catechumenate taught him to do and what all the baptized are called to do.

Some parishes invite neophytes to share their experience with the rest of the parish some time after their initiation. It’s best to give a neophyte time to process for himself or with a small group what he experienced and what it meant (mystagogy) before you ask him to speak to the assembly at a Sunday Mass about his experience. They might speak during the announcements or before Mass begins or even at coffee and donuts after Mass.

But don’t limit yourself to just the Sunday gathering as the venue for evangelization. Neophytes who are more comfortable writing their thoughts can provide a brief reflection for the bulletin or your parish Web site. Or better yet, record their reflection and put it on your parish Web site or blog just like Saint John the Evangelist Parish in Davison, Michigan, did with their neophytes.

Click the audio button above to listen to one of their neophytes, Michael McCarty, talk about his initiation experience.

(Thanks to Michael McCarty and Elaine Ouelette, Director of RCIA and Family Faith Formation for their permission to include this testimony on TeamRCIA.com. Go to Saint John the Evangelist’s RCIA Web site to hear more testimonies.)

Imagine an entire CD filled with reflections like Michael’s from your neophytes, sponsors, team members, and parishioners who witnessed the transformation taking place in your catechumens and in themselves!

Do you have other ways you invite your neophytes to share their experience with the community? Have you included reflections from your neophytes on your Web site? Click the comment link below and share your ideas.

One of the complaints I sometimes hear from catechumenate teams is that the parish isn’t really the full expression of church that the catechumens-now-neophytes might have come to expect. It is one thing to catechize them fully and correctly about how word, worship, community, and service are fully realized in the Body of Christ as it gathers around the Table of the Lord. It is another thing to shove the new Christians out of the small-group nest and into the less-than-perfect, not-quite-open arms of our fellow parishioners.

The disconnect is not difficult for catechumenate team members to spot. We, for the most part, have taken seriously the church’s mandate for ongoing, lifelong faith formation. Sometimes our fellow parishioners and sometimes even parish staff members haven’t quite embraced that vision of church.

A vision of parish

What if you could get the whole parish to engage in the kind of ongoing faith formation that we shape the catechumens in? What if the entire parish were undergoing a lifelong conversion process that led to a full implementation of the ministries of word, worship, community, and service? What if our parishes were so committed to growing in faith that the neophytes could leave the catechumenate thinking, “This is exactly what I signed up for!”?

Well, I can’t promise that’s going to happen in your parish, but I can tell you the way to get there. Or rather, Bill Huebsch can. He’s written a book called Dreams and Visions: Pastoral Planning for Lifelong Faith Formation. The book is deceptively simple. It provides a blueprint for how to move from zero to a fully realized parish, actively involved in lifelong formation. Bill’s blueprint is ten easy-to-understand steps. Easy to understand, but perhaps not so easy to commit to. The first one is the doozy:

1. Decide to do this and commit yourself to the vision.

The pastor, senior staff members, and key volunteers have to be on board. Once that’s accomplished, the rest is going to be a piece of cake by comparison. Fortunately, Bill’s book provides lots of support, suggestions, ideas, and even meeting agendas. And he has an even deeper level of support on his Web site, PastoralPlanning.com.

If you want to hand off the neophytes to a parish that can help them continue to grow in their new faith, you have to check out these resources.

What do you do after the Easter Vigil? What does the ritual text call us to do and be for the neophytes during the sacred time of mystagogy? The following checklist will give you guidance and suggestions for effective mystagogy.

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• “Expect” neophytes to gather the week after initiation to share stories and pictures of their Easter Vigil celebration and to share the Scriptures for the Sundays of Easter in light of their sacramental experiences.
• Avoid the temptation to use the six weeks of Easter as a time for information and recruitment for parish service. The appropriate time for guest speakers and sharing information about various ministries is during the initial stages of formation.
• Affirm the primary role of the assembly in liturgy and the place of the neophytes in that assembly. Avoid having neophytes serve in catechetical or liturgical ministries for at least a year, and avoid using them as RCIA sponsors or team members. Ministry flows from the experience of being a member of the assembly and then being called to ministry. The newest neophytes are not meant to be a new pool of parish volunteers! Neophytes ought to be engaged in social and service ministries from the time of the catechumenate and gradually experience the connection between the celebration of Eucharist and the eucharistic lives they live through these ministries. This takes time and reflection on what it means to be a “regular Catholic in the pews.”

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What do I wear?! That’s a question I get often when I’m planning liturgies. Whether it’s the confirmation candidate, the newly-ordained, or even the bishop, himself, we have a natural concern over what to wear.

The baptismal rite in the RCIA gives us at least one answer: Put on Christ. Therefore we physically clothe the newly baptized with a white garment. As we do so, we say them:

You have become a new creation
and have clothed yourselves in Christ.
Receive this baptismal garment
and bring it unstained to the judgment seat
of our Lord Jesus Christ,
so that you may have everlasting life. (RCIA, #229)

This white garment should then be:

• white (although another color may be used according to local custom, cf. RCIA, #229)
• unstained
• dignified
• fitting to the person’s height and size
• preferably new
• preferably theirs to keep.

It should not be:

• stained
• dingy or ragged
• wrinkled
• flimsy or small
• a dalmatic (vestment worn by a deacon)
• a chasuble (vestment worn by a priest).

Nor should you add a stole to the garment. This and the last two items above are reserved for the ordained. (Read what the United States bishops say about the baptismal garment.)

One option is to sew your own garments for your elect. This can be a ministry of the parish and a creative way to involve more people in the ministry of initiation. Invite especially the homebound who have sewing skills and those who prefer to serve “behind the scenes.”

A simple and elegant pattern for a baptismal garment can be found in the appendix of The Three Days: Parish Prayer in the Paschal Triduum, by Gabe Huck (Liturgy Training Publications, 1992). You can also purchase a pattern from the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Syracuse here.

Other options can be to gift each neophyte with an alb, the common ritual garment used by any baptized minister. (“Alb” comes from the Latin word, alba, which means “white.” The alb is worn by any liturgical minister, from the altar servers all the way up to the bishop, and serves as a reminder of baptism.) This would be an appropriate gift from the godparents, parish, and catechumenate team. A white choir robe can also work. An alternative to a full-length alb or choir robe, and a less expensive option, would be a surplice (without the cassock), such as this example.

If you sew your own baptismal garments or purchase special garments for your neophytes, send us your best pictures and we’ll post them up here.

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.”