RCIA for the First Sunday of Advent – Catholic Doctrine

So Jesus was born in a stable over 2000 years ago in Bethlehem to a poor carpenter and his wife. He entered the world very humbly. But Jesus will return in glory! This is what we celebrate in the readings this week at Mass. You will notice though that throughout every Mass we are looking [...]

RCIA for the First Sunday of Advent – the Readings

Today’s liturgy invites us to become a church of expectancy and hope. We are looking to the future; we are anticipating the coming of the Lord at the end of time.
The Catholic Church has a three year cycle that takes us through most of the Bible in the readings at Mass. Today we begin the [...]

Shouldn’t there be more than this?

I was a catechist for today’s mass, this time for the children, but neither showed up today for various reasons. So I sat in the adult session. It went well, the other catechist handled the session well for both the readings and the Feast of All Saints.
Towards the end the RCIA director came in to [...]

Catechesis on the Priesthood – Part 2

Well, I have my second Breaking Open the Word session under my belt. I prepared three pages for discussion and it didn’t seem like enough at first, but in the end it turned out to be just right.
Like I said in my last post, a lot of the content came directly from the catechist guidelines, [...]

Catechesis on the Priesthood

This Sunday I will be leading the Breaking Open the Word again for our RCIA participants. The guideline that I have says to focus the discussion on the priesthood, both the ministerial priesthood and the common priesthood. This entails a lot of prep work, for me at least.
So I have read through the Letter to [...]

Call to Holiness Conference – Detroit

I went to the Detroit area Call to Holiness Conference at the National Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak last Saturday. They had a great lineup of speakers who gave awesome talks on the Treasures of the Mass while in the setting of a beautiful Art Deco church.
The first speaker of the day [...]

RCIA Catechist

I signed up to be an RCIA catechist last year at my parish, but we didn’t have any catechumens. And so the year passed. In the summer the director had a few of us attend some RCIA formation classes down at the seminary. They were very informative even though they were intended for experienced catechists.
This [...]

Adult Faith Formation – Continued

A while back I reviewed and outlined the adult faith formation pastoral plan from the USCCB (see tab above). It is a great plan, it covers every aspect of faith formation, but it involves a very dedicated parish and staff. And, well, everybody seems to be too busy with other things, at least in my [...]

What is a sacrament?

What is a sacrament? What isn’t a sacrament in the Catholic Church?
There are seven sacraments in the Church, baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance or reconciliation, extreme unction or the anointing of the sick, holy orders, and matrimony. The sacraments are aids to our salvation; they are necessary for our salvation; they point us to what [...]

Pope Benedict on Faith and Works

In today’s ZENIT they published the Holy Father’s public address before the midday Angelus that he shared with the pilgrims at Castel Gandolfo:
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
On this Sunday, the 24th in Ordinary Time, the Word of God puts two crucial questions to us that I would summarize as: “Who is Jesus of Nazareth for you?” [...]