By Eric Brooks

The current RCIA group is arranged in 7 tables to facilitate fellowship and small group discussions. As we approach the Easter Vigil and their reception of the Sacraments of Initiation, I will be interviewing each table during their weekly meetings. This is the second of those seven interviews. 

If you are interested in becoming an RCIA candidate or sponsor, please contact Karen Cook in the parish office. 

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2 Cor 5:1)

“Oh home, let me come home; Home is whenever I’m with you.” (“Home,” Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros)

Irish financial journalist Quentin Fottrell lives and works in the United States and once commented on his visits back to Ireland. He describes it through the senses; the smell of sod, feeling the dampness of the air, tasting ocean salt on the breezes. All these things, real or imagined, combine the moment he sets foot off the airliner into an overwhelming realization that he has come home. For the candidates at Table 3, that same realization of home struck when they came to the Catholic church.

Table 3 consists of Steven (sponsor), Jenna (sponsor), Cathy (candidate), Trevor (sponsor), and Emily (candidate). Only a year ago, Steven was an RCIA candidate himself and he was eager to return to the program for his own spiritual growth and to shepherd new candidates into the faith. 

One of the more popular activities our parochial school offers is Mass with Me. Throughout the academic year, each grade level will have a day where they can bring parents, grandparents, or family friends to school in the morning. There is coffee and donuts, and then everyone attends the all-school Mass together at 8:30 am. Due to the popularity of Mass with Me, they added a handful of KISS Masses throughout the year; Kids Invite Someone Special. The KISS Masses follow the same format, but are open to the entire school rather than an individual grade level.

Cathy has a granddaughter at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School and participating in one of those KISS masses brought her home to the church. “I felt at home, called. I knew that God loves me, and I felt it more then than any other time.” After the birth of her child, Emily was experiencing depression and also remembers walking into the church and encountering that same emotion, “I felt calm and knew I was home.” 

Although raised Catholic, Jenna had drifted away from the church and remembers going through some spiritual hardships. “I literally tried 12 different churches and was going to a large evangelical church. They only had one Sunday service and I couldn’t make it one Sunday and saw our parish had three Mass times and I could make one of those. I remember sitting in the pew by myself and started crying. I knew that God is here.”

When Cathy describes her experience in the RCIA program I am reminded of the idiom, “Drinking through a firehose.” She explains, “The more I learn, the more I want to learn, and then I find out there’s even more to learn.” For Emily, RCIA has helped to dispel some of the myths surrounding the Catholic church her Baptist upbringing imparted her with. “I always thought of Catholics as structured and cold, like almost a corporation.” Now she realizes that despite the immense size of the church (1.2 billion and counting) it is still a collection of thousands of little families. 

Emily is also taken by how you can walk into any Catholic church anywhere in the world and the celebration of the Mass is essentially identical. “We could be on vacation somewhere and go to Mass and it’s just like being here at our parish.” The very definition of Catholic: of general scope or value; all-inclusive; universal (Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th ed.) A home no matter where you are in the world. 

As is often the case, the sponsors are learning as much, if not more, from their candidates than they are teaching. Trevor is, “Surprised by the depth” of not simply Scripture, but over two thousand years of Catholic teaching and theology. “The apostles entrusted the ‘Sacred Deposit’ of the faith (the depositum fidei), contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church.” (CCC 84)

Jenna continues to find new and subtle nuances in our shared faith, “Who knew the Sign of the Cross was about the Creed? All of it is tied together.” She has been deepening her faith by listening to Catholic apologist Scott Hahn and helping Cathy to learn and grown in the faith. Jenna also explains that sponsoring Cathy is very different from having previously sponsored her husband, Steven, “I can’t really talk to her on the drive home or at breakfast the next morning.” And then exhibiting the dedication of our RCIA sponsors, Jenna quickly leans over towards Cathy and adds, “You know you can call me any time.” 

Having recently been an RCIA candidate and now a sponsor, Steven finds himself “Getting into the weeds” of both Sacred Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. At the beginning of the 2022 – 2023 college football season, former Ohio State quarterback CJ Stroud recalled his growth and transformation from the previous season. As he described it, the most important progression was the game became slower. Steven explains that RCIA is similarly “Going slower” this session than his previous one. Instead of drinking from that firehouse, he can more appreciate and understand what is being taught. Through RCIA, Steven hopes to, “Gain wisdom, but not in a shallow sense. To understand God’s will.”

For her part, Jenna has struggled with simply being happy in the past. RCIA has helped her to understand that true happiness comes from fulfilling the purpose God has given each of us. That purpose for Jenna is being a shepherd, particularly to her sons. Cathy is learning to, “Have a lot more kindness, particularly for myself,” and Emily is embracing patience, “We can’t always get all the answers at once.” Trevor spends his time contemplating one of the great theological mysteries that has plagued mankind throughout the ages, “I want to know if animals go to heaven.” 

In that, Trevor is in good company. On the television series Scrubs, the character Carla once confided to a friend, “He (her husband) doesn’t know that I cry sometimes… because I’m not sure if there’s a cat heaven.” 

Read About Table #2