Fatherly Advice: Focusing on the Eucharist During RCIA

A listener named Sara emails Father Dave a question of faith: “First of all, I have listened since 2006. I love you all. Now you may find this crazy but I have been thinking about becoming Catholic since then! I am concentrating on the Eucharist because I get completely overwhelmed by the rules. Is this a sin? I feel it keeps me from Jesus rather than closer. I am in RCIA (Rite of Catholic Initiation for Adults). I have a wonderful teacher. I probably would have come into the Church this past Easter but ran into an annulment problem.  So do you recommend me focusing on the Eucharist?”

Father Dave says that the teaching of the Church recommends that all Catholics focus on the Eucharist. “The Second Vatican Council, building on the teaching of 2000 years that came before that, referred to the Eucharist as the summit and source of our faith.” The summit is the peak of the mountain that we are all climbing towards, Father Dave explains, but it is also the source of our journey to the top of the mountain. “The Eucharist is not only the top of the mountain, it’s also the backpack filled with water and granola bars and what fuels us. It’s the summit and source.”

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Father Dave acknowledges that there are a lot of “rules” to Catholicism that can seem overwhelming but makes the case that the rules are there because of the human condition and original sin. “It's not a defect of Christ himself or the Church. It's just that we're like Adam and Eve, we tend to choose the wrong thing just by design. And so those rules are there to help us keep on the straight and narrow so that we can be focused directly towards the summit and source of our faith — towards the Eucharist.”

Most of the rules, Father Dave adds, are about how we live with one another. “On the subway, you can’t have your boombox blaring. It's not because I don’t want that person to experience the music, it's because all the other people on the subway may not want to listen to the same thing. So that's what almost all rules in any walk of life for humans are about. And I would say that's the case with the Church as well, that most of the things in the Catechism, most of the things in Canon Law are about how we interact with one another.”

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Father Dave wonders if it is not necessarily all the rules that are overwhelming Sara from converting to Catholicism but just one or two rules that might be a sticking point for her. He encourages her to focus on the Eucharist, but also to lean on others that have converted that can be good sources of wisdom and information. 

“So yes, as someone coming into the Church, focus primarily on the Eucharist. But like many things I think you'll hear in the Catholic Church, It's not either or.  It's not either the Eucharist or all the rules. It's you focus on the Eucharist, but we need the rules too. It's what we call ‘both and.’ It's both of those.”