DEEPENING THE FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE
OF A RICHLY DIVERSE CHURCH

We all agree that the community needs to be involved in the RCIA. So we make bulletin and Mass announcements explaining the rites and the RCIA process, hoping the parishioners will "get" their responsibility to initiate these seekers. Then, although catechumens, candidates, sponsors, and team members form a tight-knit community, parishioners still wonder who these people are with their rituals that make the Mass long, and most of the newly initiated still disappear from the parish after Easter.

Taking to heart what the United States bishops said in their document on adult faith formation—"While the parish may have an adult faith formation program, it is no less true that the parish is an adult faith formation program"—Diana Macalintal argues that we have to stop trying to get the parish involved in the RCIA and start getting the catechumens and candidates involved in the parish.

In this book, readers will discover:

When you make your parish the RCIA curriculum, you will be shaping not just a group of people but an entire community into lifelong disciples.

Diana Macalintal has served as a liturgist, musician, author, speaker, and composer for more than 25 years. She is the author of The Work of Your Hands: Prayers for Ordinary and Extraordinary Moments of Grace and Joined by the Church, Sealed by a Blessing: Couples and Communities Called to Conversion Together (Liturgical Press).

If, as Pope Francis says, the church is a field hospital, then what does it mean to care for the wounded and heal the wounds? What would we do first? Indeed, God sends all of us—especially catechists and teachers—to heal the world. And the first thing we have to do is this: proclaim that Jesus Christ saves us. This first proclamation heals the wounds of unbelievers, seekers, and believers alike.

Field Hospital Catechesis: The Core Content for RCIA Formation explores the nine core teachings of the church that make up this first proclamation. Readers will become catechists and evangelists equipped to bring healing to those around them by learning:

This book will radically change the way you think about RCIA formation and the task of evangelization.

Nick Wagner is the cofounder of TeamRCIA.com, a training center for conversion and formation for lifelong discipleship. Through TeamRCIA.com, Nick and his wife and partner, Diana Macalintal, provide accessible, comprehensive training for RCIA teams in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Nick has been teaching and writing about the catechumenate, liturgy, and catechesis for more than 30 years. He is the author of Seek the Living God: Five RCIA Inquiry Questions for Making Disciples published by Liturgical Press.

The incarnation has made mystics of us all. What if we read the gospels as if that were true? In his book Contemplating Christ, Vincent Pizzuto offers an exploration of the interior life for modern contemplatives that is as beautiful as it is compelling. With an emphasis on the gospels and Christian mystical tradition, his book explores ancient themes in new and surprising ways. Drawing on his rich experience as an academic and priest, Pizzuto gradually unfolds the Christian mystery of deification to which the whole of biblical revelation and the Christian contemplative life are ordered: through the incarnation, we have all been made "other Christs" in the world.

The Rev. Vincent Pizzuto, PhD, is a professor of New Testament and Christian mysticism at the Jesuit University of San Francisco. As an Episcopal priest, Fr. Pizzuto serves as vicar of St. Columba's Episcopal Church and Retreat House in the beautiful environs of Inverness, California. Having founded the contemplative Christian community New Skellig in 2006, both communities now coexist under his leadership for the advancement of contemplative Christianity. He lives in Marin County with his partner, Fernando, and their pup, Forrest-who loves to fetch sticks.

This guide to monastic prayer, written in 1968 and thus turning out to be Thomas Merton's final testament to us, is now available in a new edition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of his death. While he wrote it for other monastics, all seekers drawn to explore the full dimensions of prayer will be enriched by his words, especially as they take on added meaning in today's dizzying world.

The climate in which monastic prayer flowers is that of the desert, where human comfort is absent, where the secure routines of the "earthly city" offer no support, and where prayer must be sustained by God in the purity of faith.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Catholic convert, Cistercian monk and hermit, poet, contemplative, social critic, and pioneer of interreligious dialogue, was a seminal figure of twentieth-century American Christianity.