RCIA Thoughts: Motives For Becoming Catholic

I was at another meeting of the RCIA group tonight, the purpose of which was for the inquirers (hopefully future catechumens and candidates) to tell the stories of how they came to be there.

One thing that particularly struck me listening to all these is that while the reasons people come into the Church are often pragmatic (want to get married, want to bring kids up in a church, spouse is Catholic, etc.) people's feelings about the decision to become Catholic are almost invariably very strong. Being around parish administration a certain amount, one often hears a certain amount of cynicism about people only wanting their sacraments in order to achieve some visual milestone and then vanishing, and it's true that this does indeed happen. Just because people feel strongly about something at the moment does not mean they will stick with it. People are often not very faithful to what was a year or two ago a fervent resolution.

But here, as when I was working with RCIA a few years back, it strikes me yet again that people always seem to come expressing genuine hunger for God. And as physical creatures, it is perhaps natural that that hunger is often aroused and brought to a crisis point by events in our lives as physical creatures, such as getting married, having children, or the death of a loved one.