Early in my ministry, I thought Matthew 28:19 — “Go and make disciples of all nations” — meant “go and make converts.” Make believers out of non-believers. And I assumed the best way to do that was to put them in a classroom, give them a textbook, walk them through the doctrines, answer their questions, and then baptize them.

That’s not completely wrong, but it’s very short sighted. What I wasn’t seeing was the importance of the next verse in that chapter. Jesus also charged the disciples with: “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

That’s a job description. Or, more biblically, a mission. The mission was for the disciples to go and make others who lived the Beatitudes. Jesus didn’t want people who merely said, “Yes, I believe you are the Son of God.” He wanted people who lived differently because they believed in him.

What our classrooms cannot do

Many of us who lead catechumenate teams are good at the classroom part. We’ve got binders, folders, handouts, and lesson plans galore. Seekers leave knowing things they didn’t know before. And that’s fine as far as it goes.

But it is not enough. Where in our lessons do seekers actually encounter the Risen Christ? When do the experience what Pope John Paul II called “intimacy and communion” with Jesus?

The answer the church has always given to this question is the liturgy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the liturgy “the privileged place for catechizing the People of God” (1074). The liturgy forms us into disciples by doing what disciples do. We gather. We offer praise. We hear the Word proclaimed. We bring our gifts to the altar. We share in the Body and Blood of Christ. And then we are sent.

Where in our lessons do seekers actually encounter the Risen Christ? When do the experience what Pope John Paul II called “intimacy and communion” with Jesus?

The answer the church has always given to this question is the liturgy.

Liturgy as rehearsal

Liturgy is a rehearsal of our discipleship. Every Sunday (and in every sacrament), we rehearse what it means to offer ourselves — our time, our resources, our bodies — for the sake of others. The liturgy is a ritual enactment of the Beatitudes. In the liturgy, we are reminded that the poor come first. We remember that we are to mourn with those who mourn, makes peace, and proclaim God’s reign, which operates by a completely different standard than the secular world.

When a seeker joins us in that sacrifice of praise, Sunday after Sunday, throughout the liturgical year, something happens that the classroom cannot replicate. The rhythms of Advent waiting and Christmas joy, of Lenten sacrifice and Easter exultation, form the imagination in ways that a lesson on “the liturgical year” or “the Paschal Mystery” simply cannot.

Encounter first, exploration second

It’s important to remember that our job is not just to teach about the faith. It’s to accompany seekers into deeper and deeper faith. We do that first of all through the liturgy, where they encounter the presence of Christ in a real way.

Then we follow that up with a mystagogical process that explores what happened to the seeker in that moment of encounter. What did they see? What did they hear? What did they learn?

Good mystagogy after Sunday liturgy can open much more genuine formation than an hour of doctrinal lecture and PowerPoint slides can. This is true because our “post-liturgical” formation starts from the heartfelt experience of the seeker. It answers real questions and longings that the Holy Spirit has put on their hearts.

When I’m leading a catechetical session, I always start by asking the seekers to each fill in a sentence something like this: “During the liturgy, I felt the Holy Spirit most powerfully when … and I think that means…”

Repeated over time, the accumulation of those mini-revelations leads seekers into deeper and deeper conversion. This is exactly what OCIA 75 means when it describes leading seekers not just to doctrinal knowledge, but to “an intimate knowledge of the mystery of salvation, which they desire to make their own.”

Good mystagogy after Sunday liturgy can open much more genuine formation than an hour of doctrinal lecture and PowerPoint slides can.

Liturgy is central to catechetical formation

The U.S. Bishops wrote that “good celebrations foster and nourish faith; poor celebrations may weaken and destroy it” (Music in Catholic Worship, 6). That means the quality of our liturgy is core to our mission as catechumenate teams. If we want seekers to fall in love with Christ, they need liturgies that are genuinely alive and truly foster full and active participation.

We might feel like we don’t have any control over what happens in the liturgy. But as catechists, we have more influence than we might think. We can meet with the pastor, the deacon, the liturgist, the musician—even the ushers and lectors—and share with them what we are observing in our seekers. What moves them, confuses them, bores them, energizes them?

And we can prepare seekers to engage more fully on Sunday morning. We can teach them the gestures and responses, when and why the silences happen, what the flow of the liturgy is, even what the color of the day is. That way, they will feel like they know what they are doing and not feel like visitors in a foreign land.

When we advocate for our seekers in this way, we become a bridge between them and the worshiping Body of Christ.

Come and see

Seekers come to us asking how to become Catholic. What they often mean, underneath that question, is: I’ve seen something in you, in this community, that I want. How do I get that?

What I used to say was something like, “Come back in September when classes start.” Now I know to say instead, “Come to church with me next Sunday. Come sing with us even when you don’t know the words yet. Come learn the dance by dancing it.”

The classroom can help explain and expand on what the dance of faith means. But the liturgy is where you actually learn to move in time with the Holy Spirit.