A Catechumen’s Prayer Before the Rite of Election Creator God, even before I was born, you called me and named me. Even before I understood, you sought and summoned me. All this time, you have been choosing me, Lord, in secret and intimate ways. Now, you call me to stand before you, before your people, […]
Prayers for Catechumens around the time of the Rite of Election
Every year I struggle with whether or not to ask child catechumens to come during their Christmas vacation for dismissal sessions on Sunday morning during Mass. By this time of year, the families usually need a break and my family often goes out of town over Christmas. It’s easier just to not meet during Christmas.
What about Christmas vacation for child catechumens?
After you dismiss the catechumens from the liturgy, what happens? I’ve heard lots of folks refer to “dismissal catechesis.” Are you doing catechesis during the dismissal session? Are you doing breaking open of the word? Do you ever “break open” anything besides the word—the opening prayer or the opening song, for example? Click here for
What happens during dismissal?
Silence is awkward. Remember the last time you met someone new? After you exchanged names, your new friend asked, “What do you do?” You replied, “I’m a catechist.” Looooong silence. Awkward. When we’re meeting with inquirers or catechumens, we try to avoid awkwardness. We don’t want to feel awkward ourselves, and we certainly don’t want
Five reasons to stop talking to catechumens
One of the things I love about the catechumenate is the sense of community that happens within the formation group. The team bonds more closely together, inquirers take that “leap of faith” together in the Rite of Acceptance, baptized candidates share their common love of Christ and how they find the fullest expression of that
Should inquirers be joining “the RCIA”?
When I first heard about the dismissal of the catechumens from the Sunday Mass, it was an “I-could-have-had-a-V8-smack-on-the-forehead” moment. I instantly saw the catechetical value for parish communities. If mid-pew Catholics saw people processing out of church in the middle of Mass, what would they think? How would they deal with the disruption? Who would
Time to recover the prophetic power of the RCIA dismissal
The very first time I heard about the RCIA was at a diocesan information meeting in St. Louis in 1982. I don’t remember a lot about the meeting, but the one thing that really grabbed my attention was when the presenter said that we would be dismissing the catechumens from Mass after the homily. At
Five things your RCIA team may not know about the dismissal
In the current TeamRCIA newsletter, we announced two Advent resources for faith formation—one for adults and one for children. What we neglected to do was give you link where you could find the resources! So here is the offer, with the appropriate links! (If you didn’t get the newsletter and you’d like a copy, sign
This weekend, I’ll be leading an institute in the Los Angeles archdiocese that focuses on the cathechumenate period (sponsored by the North American Forum on the Catechumenate). One of my presentations is on the minor rites that might be celebrated during that time. Lately, I’ve been using an online service, Prezi.com, to create my presentations.
For Christmas, a friend gave me The Complete Robuchon, which is 800 recipes for “French home cooking for the way we live now.” My friend and I both love to cook, although she is much more serious about it than I am. She takes classes from important chefs, stocks her pantry with sea salts from
A French chef’s guide to the RCIA
