Is your RCIA open all year-round? Let the liturgical seasons be your guide (Part 1)

6 thoughts on “Is your RCIA open all year-round? Let the liturgical seasons be your guide (Part 1)”

  1. Our parish moved to a year-round catechumenate several years ago and even our diocese has encouraged its parishes to do the same. However, we still have parishes that advertise on their outside billboards that “classes” begin in August or September. We put this in our bulletin several times a year. So we have people come to us in Aug. or Sept. Most of them turn out to be candidates for full communion. So we meet with them and explain the process and then are welcomed into the group. Recently we had two sessions going at one time, a new group and the group preparing for reception this year. We decide to put them together for a session because we were going to be talking about Lent and it went so well and they all liked each other that we decided not to separate them after that. It has gone very well. We have a small team and we don’t do it perfectly but so far it has worked for us.

  2. John Spotorno

    We use Foundations in Faith to help set the theme for each week. Also, we use Living Faith for a daily devotional.

  3. We implemented the year round Catechumenate last July. We use Foundations in Faith as a guide for topics related to the upcoming Sunday readings. So, our program is liturgically based.
    We have a team of 6 presenters, of which one of the six runs the Purification and Enlightenment phase, and another of the six runs Mystagogy.

    Challenges: Always in need of volunteers, ss RCIA Coordinator, I am looking to enlarge the team of presenters to eight, to better cover the periods when two of us need to be in different rooms with people in different phases of the program.

    Our first set of catechumens recently join our program. So now, I am in the process of building a Dismissal Team to handle the Sunday Dismissals of the Catechumens, once they go through the Rite of Acceptance in a month or so from now.

  4. We don’t have a year round program yet but it is something for us to strive for. The best way to do catechesis in a program like that is to take the Sunday readings and teach from them. That gives the participants a connection between what they are learning and what the Church is doing in the Eucharist, the source and summit of the Christian faith. Connecting them with a family is a good way to do it to spread the load where they not only learn material content but also learn how to live as a Catholic family.

  5. We have been running on ongoing RCIA journey for the last 7 years here in Singapore. Having done the cohort based RCIA for a few years prior, the joy of the ongoing RCIA is so much richer. Inquirers are invited to come to the sessions as and when they inquired at the church office throughout the year, the readings, church colours, collect and homily all matches up for the catechumens’ lesson! At every RCIA night, there will be 2 sessions running (for inquirers and for catechumens), and from Lent to Pentecost, we run an addition session for the Elect/Neophytes for their P&E and Mystagogy session.

    We use the Foundations in Faith series which links up the Sunday Breaking of Word with the corresponding lessons nicely.

    God bless.

  6. We run a hybrid model, which has been successful IMO. We run inquiry sessions year round on Wednesday evenings open to all, and a little later that evening a couple of times a year (spring and fall) a series of 15 sessions that provide a more traditional sacramental catechesis based overview of the faith. We are in the south and get a lot of Christians from non-sacramental, loosely liturgical traditions and I really do believe we need some structured teaching. We use weekly readings in both inquiry sessions and the teaching sessions, though, and I think it is vital that you connect inquirers to the rhythms of the liturgical year. . Another challenge with just using a seasonal, year round approach (for me) is that we may very well want to do reception into full communion several times a year; most of our baptized folks probably should not need to experience a full liturgical year in formation.

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