Handing On Our Faith – Looking Back and Looking Forward
At this stage in the year, most of us are thinking about the way our current journey changes as our RCIA groups reach an ending and start to think about beginning again. Reviewing the journey and planning ahead are important tasks. How do we undertake our review? There are the usual reflections on what worked well and what worked not so well, but maybe our review needs to take place at a deeper level.
This year, the Diocese of Nottingham has chosen Handing On Our Faith as a theme for the year. It struck me that the Handing On Our Faith prayer offers some key points for reflection at this stage of our journey in RCIA.
Father,
Our faith is a gift from you.
Help us by the power of your Spirit
to grow in love, so that we may be
Faithful to our baptism
Alert to the needs of our world
Inspired to proclaim your Word
Tireless in upholding justice
Hopeful in forming the future.
By handing on our faith as a gift,
may we share the hope given us by Jesus your Son.
Amen.
How do we offer ‘Faith as a Gift’?
Most gifts are gift-wrapped and part of the excitement and anticipation is untying the bows and peeling back the paper to explore what is inside. So perhaps the first question for reviewing and planning is: do we concentrate on the outer wrapping (what we do) or exploring what’s inside (why we do it)?
Tom Groome talks about our faith as offering ‘eight gifts for life’ which offer some insights into what we’re about. Recognising that
that all are good people made in God’s image and likeness
that we live in a gracious world and are called to see God in all things
that we are a community for life, made for each other – as Timothy Radcliffe says “I am because we are”
that we offer a tradition to inherit, a living tradition expressed in all times and all places, not a dusty traditionalism
our faith is built on a reasonable wisdom which isn’t about suspending reason to believe but integrating faith and wisdom
we have a spirituality for everyone which is expressed and lived in a variety of ways
our faith is faith that does justice beyond the scales
to be Catholic demands an openness to welcoming everybody even if there are aspects of their situation which seem at odds with Church teaching
That’s quite a checklist! Maybe a question for our parish RCIA teams in planning and reviewing is to reflect on these ‘eight gifts for life’ and to consider also how faith is a gift in our own lives first and then where they are found in our parish practice and how they underpin what we do in RCIA.
The central part of the prayer offers a ‘mini Catholic manifesto’ and again might offer guidance for our planning and review:
How do we talk about Baptism with our catechumens and candidates? In her recent book Living Baptism Clare Watkins reminds us that Baptism isn ‘t primarily for ourselves, it should make a difference to the world:
“…baptism is not simply about religious piety, about which group you belong to, or worship with. Baptism is not a private, devotional affair, but carries with it a demand for the transformation of life, and an empowerment to live in a changed way…baptism makes a difference to the world, a difference oriented to God.”
Clare Watkins
Is our catechesis connected to the needs of our world, locally and globally? Does it take account of what takes place outside the Church doors? Does it offer people the means to see God’s presence in all things?
How do we proclaim the word of God? Is it a fundamental part of our process or an add on? Does it make the connection between the stories people bring with them and the word we proclaim in scripture?
Is our catechesis connected with justice? Does it form us as people who are concerned and active in upholding and promoting justice?
What future does our catechesis seek to form? Is our catechesis hope-ful? Is it about forming the future or the here and now?
There are a lot of questions there, but if we are serious about reviewing the journey, reviewing our work as catechists and planning for the future, we need to have some framework which we can check with and reflect on. Hopefully this offers some useful suggestions!
Everything is Waiting For You
It’s a beautiful spring morning as I sit to write: the kind we’ve been longing for and which is much more Easter than most of the preceding twenty eight. Cold yes, but with the brightness of morning sunshine promising to warm water and soil and hearts. A wonderful morning to look to what will be next Sunday’s First Reading (Acts 6:1-7) and which begins with the words:
“About this time, when the number of disciples was increasing …”
It’s a familiar story: the good news of increasing numbers, tempered by struggle and tension; we’re not being fairly treated! And with it comes the requirement for the early church to listen to the complaints and adapt to meet the needs of the current situation. It’s certainly a relevant text for our own times, but what about the neophytes and their continuing reflection on their new status as full members of the Body of Christ? As the apostles considered ways of delegating and involving more people in the tasks of ministry, perhaps it’s a good time to consider ways in which the neophytes’ particular gifts and talents can be welcomed and put to good use within the particular parish community to which they belong. The rite instructs us:
“The period of post-baptismal catechesis is of great significance for both the neophytes and the rest of the faithful. Through it the neophytes with the help of their godparents, should experience a full and joyful welcome into the community and enter into closer ties with the other faithful. The faithful in turn should derive from it a renewal of inspiration and of outlook.” [R.C.I.A. 236]
In my last parish we made a special effort to undertake the necessary discernment and then training and support across various ministries in order that by Pentecost our neophytes could be seen to be active in an appropriate area of ministry. So we had new readers, new cleaners, new flower-arrangers, new welcomers and companions on the journey for new enquirers. Sadly, the new life of Easter can be restricted to a narrow, spiritual focus if we’re not careful and the opportunity to bring new people into new areas of ministry can be overlooked. Just as that clear blue sky of a sunny spring morning can highlight the tired paintwork and dingy windows that have survived the darkness and gloom of winter so too the Easter life of resurrection can highlight the need to revitalise ministries that have perhaps grown tired, albeit settled and comfortable. A burst of energy and enthusiasm can be just the Easter sunshine required to warm the water, the soil and the hearts of our parish ministries. Whilst a failure to consider ways of integrating the new life the neophytes represent into the existing life of the community risks leaving them marginalised and under-valued. There’s a wonderful David Whyte poem, Everything is Waiting For You, that I think speaks to both neophytes and the community at this special time, especially the final verse:
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
Perhaps part of the joy of mystagogia is the discovery that for both neophyte and parish community everything is indeed waiting!
- Everything is Waiting For You, Poems by David Whyte, 2003 Many Rivers Press
Proclaiming What?
In the parish where I serve we are struggling toward an all-year round enquiry group and an all-year round catechumenate. But we’re not there yet. So are we move pretty rapidly through the season of Easter with its primary focus on mystagogy – the pastor in me is already starting to think: ‘And who will we have next year, and where are we going to get them from, and why will they be coming?’
They come as a result of many points of contact, of course. Some are people who have a new and encouraging contact with the Church through our parish Parents and Toddlers group; others through the meeting with priests and catechists in the baptism programme or through marriage preparation, or through the First Holy Communion programme; still others coming because of contact following the death of a family member. People coming from all sorts of ‘Church’ encounters, who have caught the scent of something, got a taste for something and think there is something good here, something beneficial, considering ‘maybe this is something I should investigate more.’
And far be it from me to gainsay the value of these encounters, but there’s a little something in me that niggles. It’s all a bit ‘Churchy’.
I’ve nothing against Church. I happen to think it’s very important, and that the institutions and the community of the Church have an awful lot to offer – indeed much more than I’ve probably realised. But what concerns me a little is that if it is Church that attracts, rather than Jesus, we might be selling the gospel short.
Of course the Lord calls people in all sorts of ways. I just wonder, in a society that is so weak on community and belonging and moral values maybe the attractions of a community such as the Church are such that sometimes, and inadvertently, they might obscure the attractions of Christ himself.
I recall hearing that the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard criticised the clergy for being prostitutes of eternity – people who sold something precious, indeed sold something that should never be sold, but should only be offered, and received, as a gift freely given; as a gift which opens both the one who gives and the one who receives to an extraordinary and ennobling intimacy and experience of profound personal communion one with another. Might our happy and committed RCIA groups sometimes become a substitute for the Kingdom rather than a resource that sustains us as we search for that which we cannot give to each other but which must always come as gift from God.
The Lutheran pastor Deitrich Bonhoeffer seems to have had a concern similar to Kierkegaard when he warned Christians against he called ‘cheap grace’. In The Cost of Discipleship he wrote ‘Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian 'conception' of God.’
Bonhoeffer knew the danger of a Christianity that was merely a socialisation, that created comfortable Christians but failed to create disciples willing, precisely, to follow Christ and willing to pay the cost of following him. ‘Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea, a myth which has a place for the Fatherhood of God, but omits Christ as the living Son. … There is trust in God, but no following of Christ.’
Now our Catholic theology of Church would want to challenge the idea that Church is simply about socialisation. We confess the sacramentality of the Church, Christ present under the form of, as, us in our social relationships and in our union with him: the Church is a source of grace and not only a human phenomenon. Again, I’m grateful for what I receive and have received from Christ through the Church, and am happy for whatever I can do to help other people to recognise the richness of what the Church is and what she has to offer. But, again I wonder, what it is people come looking for and why? And what do they find that we set before them? The Gospel or something less?
I note the language of RCIA 36 in which the Church establishes what the work of the period of evangelisation and precatechumenate consists of:
Faithfully and constantly the living God is proclaimed and Jesus Christ whom he has sent for the salvation of all. Thus those who are not yet Christians, their heart opened by the Holy Spirit, may believe and be freely converted to the Lord and commit themselves sincerely to him. For he who is the way, the truth, and the life fulfils all their spiritual expectations, indeed infinitely surpasses them. (RCIA 36)
One reading of RCIA 36-47 (the section treating of the period of evangelisation and precatechumenate and the rite of entry into the catechumenate) suggests that our task in the period of evangelisation is (simply?) to evangelise: ritualisation and indeed socialisation come later: that the Church’s expectation is that people are to come to a relationship with God in Christ first. Then (and only then?) are we to help them come to an appreciation also of how the community of the Church is and can be an authentic expression of our relationship with Christ.
Does it have to be either/or? Can it not be both/and? Maybe it can be. But for myself, just at the moment, I wonder about what it actually is.
An Emmaus Walk
It's a shame that, at least as far as Sundays are concerned, we only hear the story of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus once every three years. As a story that shows the power of meeting Jesus in the Word and Eucharist, it is wonderful for all Christians - and a real gift for those in these early days of mystagogy. It's a Gospel we can go back to from time to time and reflect on how we have met Jesus - and what effect this has had on our own discipleship.
At some point, the weather in the UK has to improve - our bleak weather at Easter must soon give way to springtime! There are signs of spring around us - but they are hard to spot from under and umbrella or behind a scarf and hat. So, having a bit of faith... let us assume that this is the week when it will be warm enough to get outside and maybe take an Emmaus Walk for ourselves.
New Catholics might like to do this with their godparent or sponsor - or it could be done in small groups. The main thing is to ensure that there is space for talk - and space for the silence in which the Word can speak. It can be useful to give each person a certain amount of time - to speak without interruption or to keep silent - their companion offering respectful listening before having their own time to speak.
The Walk can be divided roughly into four parts. Though each part will have its own dynamic and there has to be flexibility if something really significant comes up, it is important that all four areas are experienced to give a sense of wholeness and completion by... Participants can always agree to come back to the parts that seem worth revisiting.
Read the first part of the Emmaus Story: Luke 24: 13-17
What were the sorts of things that we were discussing at the beginning of the Journey to initiation? And what issues along the way caused us to ask hard questions - perhaps even to wonder if this was the right path for us: was this man Jesus actually the one we wanted to follow? What helped to resolve the issues - or are there still things we are pondering on?
Read the second part of the Emmaus Story: Luke 24: 18-27
What are our memories of the Easter Triduum? Of Holy Thursday evening? Of the solemn celebration of the Lord's Passion and the long hours of waiting at the end of Good Friday and Holy Saturday? How easy was it to feel part of the events we were recalling? What emotions did we experience?
What spoke to us in the Word of God during those days? Where did we hear the voice of Jesus as the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus did - speaking - explaining - challenging - as we listened to the many pieces of Scripture of the Triduum?
Read the third part of the Emmaus Story Luke 24: 28-31 (If this can be timed to arrival at a convenient hostelry or tea room for refreshments so much the better!)
What was the experience of taking part fully in the Liturgy of the Eucharist like? What did it mean for me - does it mean for me - to recognise Jesus in the breaking of bread?
Read the final part of the story: Luke 24: 32-35
So - having encountered our Risen Lord in our confusions and questions - in the Word of God - and in the breaking of bread - what are we going to do with it? Leave it all behind with the hymnbook at the end of Mass? Or...
As we walk back to our own "Jerusalem" what do we take back - and how do we share that with other people?