RCIA: Continuing a journey of faith

NEW ULM – Each year as Lent begins, the Church celebrates the Rite of Election and the Call to Continuing Conversion as part of the process of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Its focus is on two groups of people: catechumens, or unbaptized people seeking the three sacraments of initiation –Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist; and candidates, those who are baptized but wish to be received into the full communion of the Catholic Church, including those who were baptized Catholic but previously uncatechized who wish to complete their Christian initiation through the sacraments of Confirmation and Eucharist.

learned, the more questions she had. One RCIA night, with many tears, she fearfully asked Father and the Sisters leading RCIA if she could be confirmed when she still had so many questions. Again, God answered her, not with the perfect argument to immediately dispel all her questions, but with the Church herself – a person who provided the perfect balm by saying, “You don't have to have it all buttoned up. None of us have it all buttoned up. If God is calling you to his Church, then answer that call.” Steph and our boys were confirmed a few months later.

Our journey into the Church has continued to be like that. We’re thankful for the answers we have been given, but we’re even more thankful for the Church - the Brothers, Sisters, friends, and Fathers, whom God uses to provide the answers.

God’s blessing didn’t stop with a beautiful human community, as great as that is. He wanted to give us more graces, the sacraments, the Eucharist – his very self and the “source and summit” of this beautiful community. These are the things God was leading us to.

As we go further up and further in, each good thing somehow, unexpectedly, leads us to something even better.

As a part of the Eucharistic Revival in the Diocese of New Ulm, Bishop Zielinski offers reflections on the liturgy based upon a book by Abbott Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, titled “What Happens At Mass.” Weekly reflections will be posted over a 36-week span and available in both audio or text. Visit www.dnu.org/liturgy-matters and learn more about the Mysteries of the Sacred Liturgy. New reflections offered weekly.