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Shortly after the Archbishop appointed me to serve as Senior Associate Pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes, Father Griffith invited me to conduct this program preparing adults for Baptism or (for already Baptized non-Catholics) the profession of faith and Confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church. I was pleased to accept the invitation. I had been conducting this program for the last two years at my previous assignment at Saint Olaf. Over my 40 years as a priest – and even before ordination – I have found this to be a most exciting and gratifying ministry. In the R.C.I.A. program, one is privileged to accompany adults as they literally “fall in love” with Jesus, as he is mediated through this, our 2000-year-old, world-wide, communion of faith – yes, even with her many flaws.
My first experience with the program occurred while I was studying Theology in preparation for ordination back in the early 1970ies. This was in London and I had volunteered at my local Jesuit parish in Wimbledon. I was assigned to be a mentor for a young man who wished to be united in faith with the woman he was about to marry. His intended was the official sponsor and the three of us went through the “journey of faith” together. It was so invigorating to watch them both discover and embrace this faith of ours even as they were deepening their love for each other.
My second experience was as a recently ordained priest at Marquette University working with a team of campus ministers and professors leading a large and diverse group of university students as they each discerned their calling, their “vocation,” to the Catholic Church. Perhaps, my most challenging experience with the R.C.I.A. was in the mid 1990ies, when I accompanied a whole family of observant Muslims: mother, father, three children, and a grandmother in their effort to find and follow God’s will. As it turned out, the parents and children were baptized at the Easter Vigil. Grandma accepted and even supported this. But for herself, she chose to remain with the faith of her ancestors.
I find that “falling in love” is such an appropriate image for what happens to people going through the R.C.I.A. process. It begins with something inside themselves, a hunger and a yearning. Then there is an initial attraction to something they see or experience in the Catholic faith. This attraction varies widely. For some it might be the rituals, the music, or the stories. For others the logic, the discipline, or the authority. For still others, the commitment to justice and service. And, for many, the quiet witness of a friend or lover. The process involves a close examination of both the hunger within and the object of attraction without. When it becomes clear that the object of attraction does indeed satisfy the hunger, then love happens. Conversion happens.
Those of us who are privileged serve as guides, mentors, and sponsors inevitably get caught up in the process and find ourselves measuring the depth of our own hungers and finding our own satisfactions in the richness of our faith. We too, get to “fall in love” again.
The following is attributed to Padre Pedro Arrupe, Superior General of the Jesuits from 1966 – 1983:
Nothing is more practical than finding God,
than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
We will begin the R.C.I.A. process here at Our Lady of Lourdes on Sunday September 16 th. Who do you know wants to “fall in love” (again.)
- Fr. David