A Good Night

Last night's RCIA was really cool! It started out with presents. Presents are always a good start, right? They gave us a Missal for the next year, starting in December with Advent, a little scriptural rosary booklet, and a rosary.

The topic for the night was the Communion of Saints and Mary. We started with the Saints and just kind of started going slowly through the sections in out book. Our leader kind of highlighted the important stuff and asked if anyone had any questions.

Then they gave us each a little piece of paper and had us write down a prayer request on it and put it in a basket up front. Then we all formed a circle around the room and they turned down the lights. They lighted a single candle, the Christ Candle. We slowly went up and picked up a slip of paper out of the basket, someone else's prayer request, and got a small candle and lit it off the Christ Candle. While we were doing this, on of the leaders lead us in a Litany of the Saints, Saint... Pray for us. It was just really neat and powerful!

Then we also talked some about Mary, although we were kind of running out of time. One thing that has stuck with me is out leader told us to think of ourselves as little preschoolers of kindergartners just kind of starting out and exploring the world and to think of Mary as our mother. She is a perfect Mother and knows all the things that we will need to know in the future and she will patiently teach us. She also stressed many times that Mary's job is to help us have a relationship with Jesus, a true devotion to Mary is a devotion to Christ.

I'll admit that I still don't fully "get" the Mary thing, but I think slowly I'm coming closer and closer and "getting" it more and more. I'm just trying to be patient and remembering that You don't develop a relationship with anyone overnight, Mary included!

The other neat thing that happened last night was they did a short interview with me and took my picture. Every week they do this with a different person in our group and then it goes in the Sunday bulletin. It is supposed to help us become more a part of the wider community and allow the community to know who we are and to pray for us. I think it is really neat!

So yup, in all it was a GREAT night!