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Catechumenate

Redeemer The Scrutinies #1 2019

Your Parish IS the Curriculum

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That’s the title of a book by Diana Macalintal 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. The RCIA, for those who may be unfamiliar, is the restored faith formation/catechumenate following on Vatican II. So, in these blog pages over the coming weeks we’ll turn from Paul Galbreath’s consideration of Baptism at the center of the church’s life to Macalintal’s practically-focused consideration of how the life of a parish is the curriculum for the catechumenate, or, as the subtitle says, RCIA in the Midst of Community.

Affirming that your 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.

That’s why the catechumenate/faith formation/RCIA is not a program. It is the facilitator of budding relationships in the Body of Christ. It births the incorporation of new people into the community. It is saying yes to a lifelong new relationship between the Body and this new person on the threshold of the church.

That’s why Macalintal begins her introduction with a story about Rocio, who “stumbles” onto the steps of their Newman Center, and how relationship with her transforms both her and those involved in the RCIA. Questions exchanged between them—from Rocio: What does it mean when you put your hand in that water and touch your forehead? From the RCIA folk: What do you hope for? Long for?—led to gradual change on Rocio’s part so that she became a catechumen, continuing to ask discerning questions: Who is Jesus for you and why does he matter to you? (4). And all that led to Rocio’s ultimate change: Baptism. As Macalintal, says at the Easter Vigil “the new Rocio standing before us, drenched with life and gleaming with light, was a completely brand new creation” (6).

But, because the catechumenate births new relationships, Rocio was not the only one changed. She changed the members of the RCIA team and the Newman Center parish. “[They] had become more faithful and true as Christians…had become more attentive to the Spirit’s work…had grown deeper in their love for one another and in their faith in Christ…In that font [they], too, with Rocio had been recreated into a more visible and merciful face of Christ” (6).

All that happened not because of the programmatic or catechetical elements of the RCIA, as important as those were. It didn’t happen because the teaching was utterly compelling, even though it often was. It happened because Rocio “was consistently embedded (a good description for a neophyte, or “new plant) into the ongoing life of the community beyond the RCIA group” (8). It happened because the Holy Spirit was at work through the Word in relationship with the entire Body of Christ incorporating Rocio into the life of the community. Rocio had planted roots beyond the RCIA. The catechumenate “enhanced the deeper learning of the Christian way of life that she was already living with her friends within the Christian community” (8). For us Lutherans that means our catechumenal practices, catechesis and forms are not the end, but simply part of the broader incorporation of a person into the life of our Christian community.

That is why the parish Is the curriculum. What the hoped-for new member of the Christian community is learning is the life of Christ within the life of the parish. Not an introductory class, not a catechetical program, not an introduction to the community’s structure and programs. They are learning to live in Christ as Christ lives in the life of this community.

Thus, all the members of the parish, all the baptized, are teaching the catechumens and neophytes. Their words and actions model living life in Christ. The catechumenate simply seeks to immerse them in that life, to birth relationships, to lead them to Jesus alive in their midst. In the rest of the book Macalintal will give a vision for how to do just that.

For the catechumenate, your parish is the curriculum. Faith formation opens the doors and the windows so that the neophyte can see and enter into that life.

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A Well-Watered Life

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Have you ever considered your life, at whatever age you find yourself now, as a well-watered life? Paul certainly conceives of the Christian life in this way in 1 Corinthians 3:6-7, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” He uses the metaphor of the watered, growing plant to convey the nature of Christian discipleship. A life well-watered is a life lived by faith in the Triune God who causes our growth into being daughters and sons of God.

Throughout the entirety of one’s life the hope is that we can see, at the end, that it was well-watered. And that watering begins in the baptismal pool. This is why Paul Galbreath says in his final chapter of Leading through the Water, “The baptismal waters trace across the arc of our lives to mark us as God’s own” (113). It is a beautiful image. Your baptismal waters trace across the arc of your entire life. That tracing that threads throughout your life begins at baptism—in the catechumenate—and ends at the completion of your baptism, in your final death and resurrection.

The images of baptism—such as death and resurrection, new birth, sealing in the Spirit—are the stencils that trace the baptismal waters across our lives. Every time you see those images in your life of faith you return to their source: the ritual act of God in baptism. Part of God’s act is to bring the sinful human to new birth (John 3), linking baptism to the Creator who is in His Son re-creating and renewing all things: including you, the baptized. God gives life through the mothers that bear us and He rebirths our lives through the womb of the baptismal font. God not only is our spiritual Father, but also is like our ideal spiritual mother, nurturing us throughout life from the baptismal font to the eschatological end.

Just as He nurtures us, he nurtures all waters and all of creation. Through baptism God invites us to care for these waters He created. In Galbreath’s words, “The water we use in baptism is a part of the water in the world around us. As we pass through this water, we take our place in caring for the world around us.” And for the water around us, too. We desire for all to have access to clean, drinkable water because we are washed at the font in the waters of the earth that God created. Thus Galbreath invokes as a model the pastor who invites his assembly, when visiting other places with other bodies of water, to bring water back from those places and pour it into the font, linking the assembly in its baptisms to all the earth’s waters.

The comprehensive nature of baptism is apparent. It is as Galbreath indicates “a lifelong journey of call, discernment, and service” (119). It was a lifelong journey for Jesus from His baptism to his death and resurrection and so it is for those invited to come and follow Him—to live a new life in the Christian community. It is “a lifelong journey in which our lives take on the sign of Christ” (120). And through this well-watered life we witness to the hope-filled baptismal journey we are on, a journey toward the fulfillment of baptism’s promise.

This is one of the reasons it is so important to keep baptismal imagery and practices embedded in the assembly’s rites, memories, and life. The catechumenate is one way of keeping the baptismal images front and center. By doing so the community is led to live to the end of the journey

As Galbreath concludes, based upon Revelation 22, “In John’s vision, the living water is the source for the healing of the nations. It also nourishes the fruit of the trees that provide sustenance for all who dwell in this new creation. Here the imagery of the waters of baptism in the river of life is linked to the food from the tree of life what we will share together. Baptism and Eucharist are held together in one scene as the source and summit of new life” (123). That eschatological vision is the goal and the catechumenate keeps our eyes always focused on that baptismal promise in Jesus.

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Absorbed into Jesus Christ: A Life of Renunciation of the Old and Adhesion to the New

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One of the reasons that we should perceive the catechumenate as the beginning of a lifelong apprenticeship in the faith with other Christians is because becoming a Christian requires a reorientation of life. To use biblical language, it requires death and resurrection—death to the old life and birth of a new life. This is a radical change and it necessitates having Christian mentors to guide those moving toward this baptismal reorientation.

Paul Galbreath in the 4th chapter of Leading through the Water identifies the renunciations in the baptismal liturgy as very directly expressing this death to the old and rebirth into the new that it is at the heart of the baptismal journey. The renunciations—in Lutheran Service Book “I renounce the devil, and all his works, and all his ways”—express the radical reformation of identity that is taking place in the catechumenate through God’s baptismal work. Galbreath refers to this reformation of identity as a movement toward gospel values and away from values inconsistent with and contradictory of the gospel. The Word proclaimed throughout the catechumenate facilitates and works this movement away from the person’s past life into a renewed life within a new community.

Yet, this is a fundamentally challenging reorientation. It is not easy to renounce one’s own past identity. Lots of questions and doubts surface in the process. Aspects of Christian belief will seem strange and foreign to the inquirer and catechumen. That includes the renunciations themselves. What is the devil? How do I participate in evil? What is sin? Am I really to be identified as a sinner? What is this life in Christ that I am adhering to? Why does this community love the stranger and the foreigner? Is that really what my life is all about? Is being a Christian really who I am? As Galbreath observes, “The baptismal liturgy presents the demands of this new way of life” (67).

The Christian community holds the members of the community accountable to that baptismal vision. For the catechumens their mentors/sponsors personally embody that vision and the values of renunciation for the catechumens. Through the catechumenate the catechumens “catch” the vision of a new identity for themselves and the role that renunciation (death to the old, birth to the new) plays in this new vision.

The renunciations are a present-tense, ongoing reality. For each catechumen they are grounded in trust of the Triune God and the Christian community that bears witness to him.  That same community supports and upholds the catechumens as they make this radical transition. The renunciations take shape in the individual catechumens’ lives and decisions (ie. I can no longer pursue financial wealth at the cost of everyone in my path). Through the renunciations the catechumens see how the Word of God shapes a different understanding of their priorities.

The catechumenate shapes a life of ongoing renunciation (a synonym would be repentance). Through the ongoing act of renunciation and adhesion to Christ the Christian community becomes the living embodiment of Christ to each other and the world. It is a death and resurrection experience that forms the catechumen into a completely new vision of communal life under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Through this ongoing act of renunciation and adhesion all the baptized are absorbed into Jesus Christ and his story. And it all starts in the catechumenate.

*Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Redeemer Rite of Election Laying on of Hands 2019

A Christian Apprenticeship: Learning Faith and Practices from Others

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Inquirers into the Christian faith, having entered down the path toward changing their lives, commit to an intentional exploration of the Christian faith when they become catechumens and are accepted into the second stage of faith formation. Paul Galbreath in Leading through the Water (chapter 3) refers to this stage as the Preparation stage. It is preparatory in that it is seeking to prepare candidates for baptism and entrance into the church, although the formal acceptance of the desire to be baptized comes with enrollment into the third stage of enlightenment marked by the community’s election of the candidate.

Galbreath emphasizes that the preparation in this stage focuses on a corporate model of apprenticeship in the faith, rather than a hierarchical, noetic, individualistic notion of faith formation. Often, as he notes, we teach potential new Christians head knowledge, but make no effort to help them integrate faith with human life. We leave them on their own. We’d never take that approach with a child so why should we do so with adult-age children in the faith?  Like any child, we should teach adults to learn the faith and the practice of the faith from the Christian community itself.

Such a corporate understanding of faith formation has significant implications for the catechumenate/preparation period. It approaches learning from a collaborative mindset with pastors, church workers, catechumenal directors, sponsors, and the catechumens themselves all committed to sharing life together and learning from one another what it means to live as a baptized child of God. In this collaborative model, mentors/sponsors pay a committed role in which they “study, work, pray, eat, and learn side by side” (Leading through the Water, 43) with their catechumens. Sponsors are Christians who make real the transformative power of the gospel.

The corporate model of the catechumenate also shapes a different leadership style in the congregation. Everyone in the Christian community has responsibility for those becoming Christians. Pastors and other church workers share the responsibility for formation with the catechumenal director, catechists, sponsors, and the entire community. As Galbreath argues, the focus is “on the life of Christian companionship . . . and the journey of discipleship . . . in congregational ministry and mission” (Leading through the Water, 44). In this regard the pastoral staff view themselves as fellow travelers with the catechumens and with all those shaping their formation in the Christian faith.

This collaborative approach means that catechumens are more than being taught knowledge. They are being apprenticed, formed toward faith, living a life of faith, serving others, and bearing witness to the world. Practices of the faith and apprenticeship in how to practice them are a central concern of the catechumenate. Opportunities to serve others in the church and in the greater community are planned and emphasized. This in turn has the effect of re-directing their priorities and values. Such embodied teaching embeds the faith in their very bones. And it creates honest, supportive conversation about the nature of the faith among pastors, catechists, sponsors and catechumens. In order to create opportunities for apprenticeship in the faith pastors are focused as much on training and molding catechists and mentors as they are in teaching/forming the catechumens.

As Galbreath rightly argues, “Mentoring disciples is a long process that rests on the foundation of baptism as a lifelong journey” (Leading through the Water, 54). It is a journey all of us are on together and together we form and teach one another to learn the faith and practice it.

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Who am I?: The Catechumenate as Forum for Life’s Questions

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One of the aims of FormingLutherans.org is to “promote and make available to the LCMS and the larger church the enlivening resources of proven and tested formation practices.” One way to accomplish that goal is to post regularly on resources that can increase knowledge and familiarity with catechumenal practices. So, on a regular basis we will post about what we are reading currently on the catechumenate. (Those who have attended one of our conferences will find most of these resources on the bibliography prepared by Rev. Danny Eggold; hopefully we can make that available on FormingLutherans.org). I (Kent) am currently reading Presbyterian minister and professor Paul Galbreath’s book Leading through the Waters. Published in 2011, the book aims to inform and reshape the distinctive way of life (as Galbreath conceives it) within the Christian community by grounding that way of life in baptismal practice and theology. Central to baptismal practice for Galbreath is the modern form of the catechumenate. He links baptism and the Christian way of life through the formative pattern of the four traditional catechumenate stages: Inquiry, Preparation, Baptism, and Reflection. Given Galbreath’s aim, he is focused less upon the sacramental impact upon the one being baptized, and more on the ritually formative power of baptismal practice for the congregation that participates in and administers baptisms. Not surprisingly, he begins his first section by reflecting upon a font in Pampulha, Brazil that is in the shape of a huge question mark. Galbreath notes the appropriateness, since in our relationship to God and to the world our entire lives are in a sense a big question mark. He says, “I will be exploring baptism as a life-long journey, as a question mark that hovers over us, constantly prodding us to examine our lives and our relationships with God, with one another, and with the earth that God created” (p. 9). The catechumenate is the best environment for exploring life as one giant question mark. And it helps us to recognize that this is the ongoing nature of human life in relationship with the God who created us. Throughout life we will be asking questions within the Christian community, both of one another and of ourselves, about who we are, who God is, why we are here, and where we are going? Asking and seeking answers to these questions—a repetitive pattern—is the occasion for growth in life before God and in communion with sisters and brothers in Christ. The catechumenate is the safe place to let the questions fly. Next time we post on a catechumenate resource we’ll explore Galbreath’s understanding of the period of Inquiry in the catechumenate.