Walking the Rite way

The Miracle Maker is an animated film produced for the Jubilee Year 2000 which tells the story of Jesus. It generally uses the gospel of Luke as the source for its narrative – but it hangs loosely to the source, and treats it somewhat creatively. This is most noticeable in its development of the character of Tamar, the daughter of Jairus. It’s easily available from most DVD stores, or of course from Amazon. or Play.

It was well-received by faith communities: A pretty typical review follows:

In The Miracle Maker, the film’s makers have a small miracle of their own: a simple, modest retelling of the gospel story of the ministry and passion of Christ that does little more than present the bare events of the gospel narratives, without adornment or invention, without idiosyncratic “explanations” or editorial spin, without elaborations for the sake of amusement or excitement.

It’s so straightforward, it’s practically revolutionary. Adapting a story for the screen substantially as it was written is a lost art nowadays. It’s easy to see why, in a way; storytellers are just naturally attracted to projects to which they feel they have some creative contribution to make; some special angle or insight to offer.

http://artsandfaith.com/t100/2005/entry.php?film=52

You might wonder about the claim that there is little adornment or invention – remember Tamar – but she operates more as a narrative device to help the viewer engage with the story of Jesus than a distraction or dumbing down.

The Miracle Worker is a rather beautiful creation – most of the narrative shown through stop-go animation; but others through painted cell work. And it is an engaging presentation – with much of the credit for this going to the somewhat stellar cast, led by Ralph Fiennes as Jesus.

We’ve been using it in our parish over the past weeks – a ten minute section as a time, as a way of familiarising the group with the outline of the story of Jesus, and as a ‘safe’ way of giving them matter for discussion reflection. Last year we had a very quiet group who rather resisted discussion. It’s a different group this year but there’s much discussion and I think the film is to credit for that.<

I’d recommend the film as a most useful aid for first evangelisation, for the pre-catechumenal time. And I am happy to share below the  discussion sheets we used to to give you an indication of the sort of conversation starters we’ve used.

• 1-Values.pdf
• 2-Kingdom.pdf
• 3-Call.pdf

The parish I serve has a term-time catechumenate. It starts up again next week. So the last few weeks have been a time for more focussed encouraging of people to come along as our group starts back after its fallow-period post Pentecost.

People come to the group that supports the catechumenate through a variety of ways. Particularly important are the personal contacts - through friendships in the parish; through the Parents and Toddlers groups; through the pastoral encounters around weddings and funerals. But also of importance - it seems to me, (their author and designer!) - are the leaflets and posters we put around - sources of information, prompts to action.

Last year I used a series of posters which used images of gates and paths and lighthouses. I hoped these would suggest the idea of journey, and - who knows - for the more biblically literate the idea of Christ our pioneer, our way, the gate, the light. A few people noticed them but they didn’t seem to find them particular significant - the images didn’t seem to register, much.

So this year I decided I’d lose the visual images and go for words. Searching? Questioning? Lost? And suggesting that in response to these experiences the Gospel has something to offer - companionship on the way; support in the search; and yes, able to introduce the searcher to a relationship with Christ who we have found to be the way, truth and life.

I though the new poster looked pretty good and eye catching. Bold graphics, bright colours. I still think that. But a number of the people who I am in contact who will be coming to the group have been on the look out for the poster which would give them information about when the group starts up. And none of them thought that what this poster was advertising could be what they are looking for!

I’ve not yet had the chance to explore with them why that might be. But clearly the poster and its words speaks to my agenda and not theirs. At the moment it’s enough for them to know when to come and where to ‘become a Catholic’. Their main interest is not the why or wherefore

So, all this has got me thinking again about where people are coming from and what, at a conscious level at least, people are looking for. I’m comfortable with the idea of people searching from motives of existential angst. I’m also happy with the idea of people interested in ‘becoming Catholic’ or wanting to deepen a relationship with Jesus or the Church. Different things engage and motivate different people. I hope in pastoral practice that I’m sensitive to that, and can give space for the person to journey as they see fit as well as trying to feed into their exploration of Catholic faith an awareness of important dimensions that they may not yet have considered in any conscious or explicit way.

But the question of the posters and what we put on them and what they say to people has me thinking again about what we offer and what people want. What is the good news we want to share? I can put names to aspects of that. But then my fear is that the Christian specificity of these things might be neglected. We could offer ‘Community’. Our Gospel offers this, but it also promises to set brother against brother. ‘Truth through intimacy with Jesus’: we can offer that. But from time to time Jesus might turn and call us Satan and say we think as people think and not as God. ‘Security’ too we can offer, but it is a security that sometimes leads us into hard and lonely places.

It probably all boils down to a matter of quality of catechesis. They will perhaps be coming from one reason. The challenge to the group is to ensure that if they stay, they stay for a reason which is acceptable to the Church and authentic to the Gospel we preach.

My personal fresh resolution - encouraged by the poster issue - to try to make sure that the Gospel we share in our pre-evangelisation meetings and in catechumenate is one which welcomes those who come, offers the assurance we all need that we are loved by God and chosen. And at the self same time, draws us speedily into the mission which helps us to see that if the Gospel is for us, we and not just the Gospel are for the world.

Walking round the local mega-supermarket last year in Autumn (part of a well known ‘family’) was like entering a time-warp. In the same aisle were Halloween costumes, Bonfire Night essentials and a few early reminders that Christmas wasn’t too far away. In the milk aisle, the plastic cow was mooing and the plastic chicken clucked next to the eggs. In the background, over the PA system, someone was giving a commentary on life in the store – bargains on aisle 26, Golf Clubs on aisle 2 – oh, and  “Sandra on aisle 24 is 40 today, lets all sing: Happy Birthday too you…”. By the time I got the shower-gel aisle, I was completely overwhelmed with the endless choices – Which water do I want? What kind of bread do I want? What kind of cereal, soap, ….? The experience became somewhat surreal and for a moment, time stood still and I began to feel like I was caught in some weird sci-fi universe in which “resistance is futile”.

So, what has this got to do with RCIA? The key thing is to trying not to overwhelm people all at once with the speed of the process and all that’s on offer.

As many of our parishes will be preparing to welcome new enquirers over the next couple of months maybe we need to be aware that in new situations people can easily feel overwhelmed, carried along by the momentum of the group and end up feeling a like there’s no way out - or that ‘resistance is futile’. We often speak of meeting people ‘where they’re at’ and not where we want them to be. This requires discernment on the part of the enquirer and of catechists – and it requires us as catechists to be aware of any of our own desires and tendencies which might be coming into play. It also means avoiding the temptation of the October – Easter ‘course’. RCIA is a gradual process, not a treadmill. How does the way we work in parishes allow for the different speeds at which enquirers will journey?

We also need to avoid the RCIA curriculum approach – we’re not about putting everything our faith brings to us on offer all at once – like the supermarket shelves. We are about creating space for an encounter with Christ. As Pope Benedict said recently, Christianity is not a moral code or a philosophy, but an encounter with a person. In speaking of Paul on the road to Damascus he said “this change of his life, this transformation of his whole being was not the result of a psychological process, of a maturation or intellectual and moral evolution, but it came from outside: It was not the result of his thinking but of the encounter with Jesus Christ.”

( http://www.zenit.org/article-23546?l=english)

In exploring the implications of conversion for us as Christians today, he said “We can touch Christ’s heart and feel him touch ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we really become Christians. And in this way, our reason opens, the whole of Christ’s wisdom opens and all the richness of the truth. Therefore, let us pray to the Lord to enlighten us, so that, in our world, he will grant us the encounter with his presence, and thus give us a lively faith, an open heart, and great charity for all, capable of renewing the world.”

( http://www.zenit.org/article-23546?l=english)

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.

So how do you recruit? It may not be the right term, but if we put as much energy into recruiting as the National Trust do, just think of the numbers we may be initiating into the Church.

Two things got me going on this, one was a comment  about the likelihood of a Rite of Acceptance, that ‘we may have someone who has just joined the RCIA. They’ve been to the first session’. The second was when I was literally standing at the front door to the parish office and was told ‘that we might have a couple of ‘nibblers’, who’d made an approach. It was probably standing at the outside door to the parish office that did it, but I suddenly thought, how we were failing prospective Christians by waiting for them to approach our church. Both the above comments recorded the expectation that enquirers make their first approach to the church, and while in some respects that is correct, we seem to have forgotten there is an even earlier stage. What might it take before we get into the mindset of being open to evangelisation away from the church door.  

The first thing is to note that evangelisation is not taking every opportunity to ‘preach God’ to the unconverted. It is not proselytising and it’s not moralising. I think of it as being open to the Holy Spirit working in others and using me as its instrument. I couldn’t stand on a street corner and proclaim the Good News of God, but I’ve come to see how in subtle ways I can open other people’s hearts to the joy and hope that Jesus brings.   Here is one example. 

Somebody I know (but not a close friend), who has had their share of worries in their personal and family life, sent me a text  one Sunday morning asking when I went to church if  I would ask my God to keep a special eye on someone for them. It came right out of the blue from someone who had previously told me they couldn’t find God in their lives because of all the troubles they’d endured. I was delighted to be able to text back and say ‘of course’.

I got another text the next week, asking if I would please send the same words to God. I must have been a bit slow, because it needed this text to make me think that I should be doing something other than praying, as I’d been asked. Eventually, I sent a text with a little story about a close (non baptised) friend of mine, who at a time when she was experiencing some family problems, had told me how she liked to call into churches, any church, and look for a statue of a beautiful lady, with a serene face, who she would talk to, and how it used to make her feel calm, and at ease.  After my text there was silence for a while, and then I got a text back that mentioned about looking for a very easy book about God.  I thought of all the books I’ve got and realised that a story version of the Gospel was the best book to start with. I got an email address and sent a few ideas. 

Now I don’t know what will happen with this person’s journey, but I do believe that similar opportunities happen to us all in our daily lives, and that this is when evangelisation takes place. It is a way that the whole parish can get involved in subtle ways in the first period of the RCIA, after all:

‘the precatechumenate is of great importance… It is a time of evangelisation: faithfully and constantly the living God is proclaimed and Jesus Christ who he has sent for the salvation of all. Thus those who are not yet Christians, their hearts opened by the Holy Spirit, may believe and be freely converted to the Lord….’ (# 36).

Being honest, I know in my parish that the message has not yet got through that it is the whole Church, (RCIA General introduction 7), all the baptised, who have a part to play in the very first period of the RCIA (# 8). Until the ‘entire community’ understand that their individual and collective role as Christians is to ‘proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God’ (EN 14) then new Christians will only enter our church when they manage to arrive at the church or parish house door.

Until RCIA ceases to be the domain of the few who make up or are affiliated to the RCIA team, the whole dimension of ‘witness’ will go undetected and undervalued.

I’ll end with a suggestion. As our fully initiated Catholics emerge at the Easter Vigil, how might we benefit from their experience? Has anybody analysed and assessed how the last ten years of enquirers got onto the RCIA? How many of our PPC’s have anyone with responsibility for evangelisation? What strategies can we introduce for reaching out to the unchurched?

How do we use our liturgy to express Catholic identity? Is it accessible to those who are not (or not yet) Catholics? Is it inculturated? Is it faithful to Catholic tradition?*

• Evangelisation in England and Wales- Report to the Catholic Bishops (2002)

Most parish enquiry groups are a mixed bag, so I don’t think ours is unique in that we have two unbaptised teenagers and their uncatechised but baptised Mum; a person who was ‘received’ elsewhere two years ago through one-to-one instruction but has never felt she ‘belongs’ to the Catholic church, and although fully initiated, she comes along to share in the catechesis;  then we have a man whose first marriage has just been annulled, now engaged to a young widow parishioner; another is married to a Catholic whose children are now being prepared for Holy Communion and he wants to think about becoming a Catholic himself;  a woman from a Protestant background with a strong personal relationship with God, but no experience of ‘church practice’; and finally, a woman who met one of our neophytes in a cycling club and is interested in finding out more (about the Church, not cycling!)  

When we first started using the Rites of Initiation of Adults we were worried about this sort of mix, and how to meet each person’s needs.  Now we have stopped worrying!  We see it as real ‘treasure’ for the parish.  Using the liturgical year, and the lectionary, as mainstays for our catechesis, we have found that over a period of between 1 and 3 years our catechumens come to a deep understanding and experience of the mysteries at the heart of our faith. We are no longer ‘driven’  by the time constraints of a more programmatic approach - and we would call this more of an ‘apprenticeship’  into the Catholic Christian way of life - the sort envisaged in the Rite itself.

All these people have knocked at our door at odd intervals since last January, and we have trained ourselves (!) to say ‘Come in’ rather than ‘Come back in September’.  We are muddling our way towards an all-year round ‘Come and See’ enquiry.  By about Advent most people have been with us for several months, and we offer the first opportunity for the Rite of Welcome (or Acceptance).  In looking at the Rite together, seeing what is required, it has been discerned (by us and them) that 3 of our 7 enquirers are ready for this step. And that hasn’t been difficult - people know when they are reay, and we can see the change in them over the months - there is an infectious enthusiasm, an openness to the Gospel, eagerness to learn to pray, to be part of community life.  Others are still a little cautious about what this commitment might mean, and want to carry on asking questions.

With the limited resources in our small rural community, the team decided to have the enquiry and catechumenal sessions on the same night.  This means a welcoming drink and chat, followed by prayer time and gospel sharing together, and then split into the two groups for the deepening catechesis, with two members of the team guiding the process in each group, with sponsors there to support.  The main ‘pillar’ of our catechesis in Advent for both groups continues to be the Sunday gathering, with opportunity to reflect afterwards on the experience of the Liturgy - the heady mix of signs and symbols, gestures and vestures, words and silence, is rich enough fayre for any apprentice to feast on! Leading up to Christmas we have some parish activities planned, and the enquirers and catechumens are actively encouraged to take part in community life - special advent liturgies, an outreach to the elderly housebound, a presentation on our Zimbabwe project - all of this is part of the apprenticeship in the Christian way of life, deepening the awareness of Christ in the season of Advent.  Yes, Christ in history, and Christ who will come again, but most importantly, the Christ who comes and is present is so many ways in our every-day C21 lives.

Resources:

• Have a look at RCIA Network website [www.rcia.org.uk]  for Tool Box for discernment among other things;
• The Liturgy Office  for info on lectionary based catechesis and lectio divina.
• www.cliftondiocese.com produce some resources for year-round lectionary based catechesis
• Shrewsbury (Paddy Rylands) and Brentwood (Nuala Gannon) produce weekly  ’lectio divina’ leaflets.