The Adult Catechumenate and Christian Formation: Questions from Your Parish is the Curriculum
Back from July 15-August 20, 2021 Rhoda and I ran a series of blog posts on Diana Macalintal’s aptly titled book published by Liturgical Press in Collegeville, Minnesota. Macalintal is one of the founders, along with her husband Nick, of TeamRCIA.com, A Roman Catholic group promoting best practices in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults or RCIA. Macalintal in her excellent book by affirming that the parish is the curriculum grounds the basic recognition of why there is faith formation at all: it is for incorporating a person into the life of the Body of Christ. And that person is incorporated into a specific Christian community that lives together in a particular place at a particular time. The person being incorporated comes to know Christ in and through the life of that community gathered around Word and sacraments. But it is the community that mediates that relationship to the neophyte (whether unbaptized, baptized, or confirmed). Thus, the parish IS the curriculum.
My students explored Macalintal’s first chapter this week and highlighted these quotes from the 1st chapter as beneficial for attending to her argument:
- We start to see Baptism more like a verb than a noun (17).
- Living the Christian way of faith requires, then, a daily discernment of how God is calling us to respond by faith to our baptism (18).
- Not a textbook or a program but rather our full, conscious, and active participation in the liturgy of the church is the primary and essential way we learn what it means to live as Christians (18).
- Good parish life fosters and nourishes faith. Poor parish life may weaken and destroy it (23).
- Because your parishioners have been washed, anointed and clothed as priests, prophets, and kings, enlightened with knowledge of Christ, endowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and strengthened by the Eucharist to grow into the full stature of Christ for doing Christ’s mission, they are the best teachers for your catechumens and candidates (24).
- If we are to announce this at every level and moment, we cannot limit our method of proclaiming it and teaching it to just a weekly meeting in a classroom, no matter how excellent that gathering might be (26).
Your parish as the curriculum is aimed toward forming the baptized to live out of their baptismal identity. Formation to live out baptismal identity comes not primarily through “head” knowledge but through experiential knowledge. As Macalintal says, “We learn by doing, especially by praying” (18). This experiential learning comes through participation in the community of Christ, especially through the assembly’s gathering for worship. Through the corporate liturgical experience catechumens and neophytes are drawn into life with Christ. They receive the eyes needed to see the world as God sees it and perceive the Triune God’s story as being brought to completion for, in, and on behalf of His creation. Everything that the church does flows from its corporate worship and catechizes everyone in the body of Christ. As Macalintal indicates, “Catechesis is helping believers open their hearts to encounter the living Christ active in the church” (21). When baptism matters in this way then the baptismal community—the parish—matters, because it immerses all into Christian life within the community. In this way the catechumenate is an apprenticeship in faith and in the life of faith led by the parish that responds to God’s living voice; encounters Christ’s mercy among those who receive and offer forgiveness; turns to the Father in prayer; walks with and serves those in need (27).
Hopefully these quotations help you focus on what is at the center of your catechumenal and baptismal formation in this Holy Week as the elect reach the foundational pinnacle of their formation.
Blessings as you celebrate the Paschal Feast in sincerity and truth in this most Holy Triduum!