Catechumens take last steps toward baptism

By Ana Rodriguez Soto - Florida Catholic newspaper

MIAMI | Actions, not words, brought Robert Rowe to the Catholic faith.

“He just met so many sincere people who were trying to help one another,” said Rowe’s soon-to-be godparent, Visitation parishioner Jeannette Carter.

“Sincerity,” echoed Rowe, 53. “True servants of the Lord. People serving with their hearts.”

Carter regularly took Communion to residents of a nursing home near the North Miami church. Rowe was often there, visiting his mother.

“He asked so many questions,” said Carter. “And he would listen to my answers.”

Rowe said he grew up attending various denominations — Presbyterian, Baptist, non-denominational — “because of my family.” Only one thing remained constant: his love of the Lord.

“He has a direct line towards God, towards Jesus. That was his focus,” said Carter.

But the Catholic Church offered something more: structure, organization. So eventually Rowe asked Carter what it would take to join the Church. She told him at least a year of study as part of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, and then he still could change his mind.

He didn’t. So on the first Sunday of Lent, he and Rowe were seated in the front row of St. Mary Cathedral, ready to take part in the Rite of Election.

At the appointed time, Rowe walked up to the Book of the Elect and signed his name, signaling his intention to spend this Lent intensely preparing for baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, the sacraments of initiation which he will receive at the Easter Vigil.

He is already involved in Visitation Parish: helping take grocery bags to people’s cars when the church’s St. Vincent de Paul Society distributes food to the needy every other Wednesday. He also likes to sing in the choir.

“That’s what I’ll do for the rest of my life,” Rowe said. “Sing for God’s glory.”

Rowe is one of around 550 catechumens who took part in two Rite of Election ceremonies at the cathedral March 5. Over 30 parishes were represented at each. The catechumens — people who have never been baptized — came with their godparents and family members, as well as parish RCIA coordinators. They filled the church to capacity both times.

“I’m flabbergasted at how many people are coming into the Church,” said Mary Ann Wiesinger, director of Evangelization and Parish Life for the archdiocese. “The Holy Spirit is alive and working in Miami.”

The catechumens include a growing number of children, age 7 or older, who were not baptized as infants, she said. Often that’s because “the practices of the normal faith life are interrupted because of immigration.”

A case in point: the children of Nadya Paez- Sansoneti and Gilberto Paez. Originally from Venezuela, the couple emigrated about 10 years ago. Their sons, Gabriel, 7, and Alejandro, 10, will be baptized during the Easter Vigil at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Kendall.

“We have moved many times and were not registered in any parish,” Nadya explained. “And time passed.”

The family attended St. Catherine of Siena in Kendall and St. Hugh in Coconut Grove until they finally settled in a neighborhood near Our Lady of Lourdes.

They also kept waiting for the couple they had originally chosen as godparents to come from Venezuela. Seeing that it wouldn’t happen anytime soon, the Paezes asked another couple to take on the responsibility.

Joel Campos and Maria Buscemi “have been our friends since we got here,” Gilberto Paez said. Then he added, “It’s not easy to immigrate.”

On the bright side, said Nayda, the boys are not babies. “We think it’s beautiful because they are conscious of everything.”

In his homily, Archbishop Thomas Wenski reminded the elect that baptism is “the gift of life, everlasting life,” that makes us “friends of God.” But like any gift, “it must be accepted, it must be lived.”

Conversion “does not end with baptism,” the archbishop noted. “As Catholics, we believe that conversion is our life’s work. Our earthy pilgrimage must always be lived as a continuing turning to the Lord, and therefore a continuing turning away from sin.”

“Today, as you are numbered among the ‘elect’,” the archbishop said, “be not afraid to walk on your life’s journey as zanmi Bondye” — the Haitian translation of saints, which literally means “friends of God.”