RITE OF CHRISTIAN INITIATION (R.C.I.A.)

also known as

JOURNEY IN FAITH

The Journey in Faith group at Sacred Heart Hillsborough is a gathering of people who are interested in knowing more about the Catholic Church. Some are enquirers who are thinking about becoming members of the church in due course. Some are parishioners who support the enquirers with their sharing of experience of what it means to them to belong to this community of faith.

We meet on Sundays at 7pm in the Presbytery in term time, and each session lasts no more than 1½ hours. We cover a range of topics that are fundamental to the church's life and mission, an an important element in our conversation is the listening to each other's questions. We often find a breadth of responses linked to our understanding of the holy scriptures, the teaching of the church, and the fruit of our own experiences of life.

A typical programme would include:

  • Human experience and search for meaning reflected in the Old Testament
  • Hopes realised in the life and words of Jesus Christ
  • Teaching of Jesus fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
  • Jesus lives on in his Church and the Scriptures through the Holy Spirit
  • Trying to make sense of suffering, and social justice
  • Relationship with God through Prayer
  • The Church continues Christ's saving work through Baptism
  • Confirmation
  • Eucharist (the Mass)
  • Reconciliation (Confession)

If you are interested in coming to see without obligation, please give us a ring on 0114 2343580 or email so that we know to expect you, and you can be sure that we haven't made other arrangements for that particular Sunday. But you can just turn up if you prefer!

You might like to read the quotations below and reflect upon their meaning for you.

Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest who was very influential in the 20th century, and Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest who continues to inspire many people today through his books and talks. In the Journey of Faith meetings, we sometimes listen to extracts from his talks on CDs.

Teilhard de Chardin

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages,

we are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through some stages of instability -

And that it may take a very long time.

And so it is with you.

Your ideas mature gradually - let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don't try to force them on, as though you could do today what time (that is to say,

grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.

Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you and accept the

anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”

Richard RohrFEET IN BOTH CAMPS

We have to learn to live both in the world as-it-is and the world as-it-should-be. One is power; the other is love. Power and love are conjugal partners. Power without love is brutality, but love without power is soon mere sentimentality. We have to put the two together in this world.

Power is not a bad word; it has to be a good word. We cannot live in this world in the perfect kingdom of pure love, where it’s structured correctly, where everybody thinks like us, where everybody celebrates liturgy like we think it should be celebrated.

We are pilgrims and strangers, walking on the road, like the disciples, with a fragile possession, that we ourselves do not possess or even understand.

Jesus proclaimed the reign of God in a time of occupation, enslavement and corruption of religion. If he could say, ‘The kingdom of heaven is in your midst’ right now, then how can we do any differently? The genius of biblical faith is the grace to keep one foot in both camps at the same time: the world as it is and the world as it should be.