"You have sought and summoned them in many ways, and they have answered..."
What brings people to the RCIA?  In 2007, we interviewed our catechumens about what brought them to the Catholic Church.  Some of their answers are below.

• I married into a Catholic family but did not make any transition to Catholicism.  I used to come to church every Christmas with my husband (to make his mom feel good).  Then all of us—my son, my daughter, and my husband—felt this calling.  When we came here on Christmas Eve in 2005, I knew I was home.  And we’ve been here ever since.

• I started attending five or six years ago on a regular basis, and just fell in love with the liturgy and the music here.  Then I started coming much more regularly when my wife joined the women’s Schola about three years ago.  I guess I’d been thinking about it in my heart and my head for fifty years and finally decided it was time to get on with the really important things in life, the things that really matter.

• I kind of grew up Catholic, attending Catholic schools.  Becoming Catholic is something I’ve always wanted to do.  When I got to college I got caught up in being young and free and now that I’ve grown out of that stage this desire to become Catholic came back to me.  It’s like God is telling me to do it now, to move forward.  I’m also getting to a point in my life when I’m thinking about starting a family.  Receiving the sacraments, and being able to be married in the Church, is important to me.

• For me being Catholic just makes sense.  I remember coming in and asking Helen all these questions.  I was determined to have it not make sense and not be a fit.  So when people ask me, I tell them it’s not because my husband is a Catholic, because I could have done it many years ago.  It’s just because it makes sense.  I just felt a calling to be a Catholic.  Sometimes people ask me, isn’t being Catholic about feeling ashamed and guilty all the time?  And I haven’t had that experience of the Church at all.  I tell them no, no!

• When I came here, I loved the community and people.  Call it eclectic, but I loved the combination of all the different cultures and races.  I also liked the way I was accepted when I came in.  If you had told me four years ago that this would happen, I would have said, ‘you’ve got the wrong person.  Not a chance.’  But the combination of study, the people, the parish, and understanding the faith has brought me in.  I have to laugh, because of all religions, honestly, this was the one that was like, “no way!” 

Read the entire interview with four catechumens baptized Easter 2007 at St. James Cathedral here.

"I want to be a part of it forever"
Two catechumens baptized in 2003 share their stories

Pat Evans was raised in what she now calls the “Heinz 57” tradition: a little bit of everything while she was growing up. It was not until she began studying art history, and experienced the works of the Renaissance masters—deeply imbued with the Catholic faith, and illuminated for her by a Catholic art history teacher—that she found her way to the Catholic Church. Searching for a Catholic church in Seattle, she discovered St. James on the Internet. When she came to Mass here she felt she had found her spiritual home. Participating in RCIA at St. James has only reinforced this feeling: “It’s made me realize I want to be a part of it forever.”

For Vicki Murphy, who was raised in the Christian Science tradition, there was a different path to the Catholic Church and to St. James. As a music major in college she had visited many of the great cathedrals of Europe. These were for her profound experiences of God and of the Catholic faith. “You can feel God in those places.” She sought out St. James shortly after moving to Seattle and soon saw a notice in the bulletin about the RCIA program. It has been an amazing journey from a background that was “very much not Catholic,” but she loves it, and looks forward to “being a part of it, a part of this community, to belonging.”

Read more about Pat and Vicki, baptized at the Easter Vigil in 2003, here

"A Birthday for my New Life"
Parishioner Elise Gruber looks back on her baptism

I was baptized at the Easter Vigil in 2005. At prior Vigils, I watched people come out of the font with that mixture of serenity and shock on their faces and it lodged a difficult-to-shake feeling of desire inside me. In my heart of hearts, I knew I wanted that.

I had done a lot of discernment regarding my desire to convert, so I felt ready and excited that Saturday. In fact, I didn’t get scared until we were up on the altar singing the Litany of Saints. I started to get woozy and my knees felt weak. The fear didn’t come from doubt or performance anxiety, but from the unknown inside me. How will I react? Will I freeze up or cry? Will it suddenly strike me funny and I’ll laugh uncontrollably? Worst of all, will I feel nothing and therefore a profound disappointment?

When we turned to face the font, there was a moment of confusion. We never discussed who would go first! I turned around to see my fellow Elect looking at me, half of them with that deer in the headlights look, and the other half waving me forward. So I went first.

When the Archbishop poured the baptismal water on my head, it felt thick and oily. All time stopped and it was extremely quiet, like the church was empty. I felt completely at peace. I walked out of that font a profoundly changed person. The Easter Vigil was, and continues to be, a birthday for my new life.

Read more about the great moments of Holy Week here