Ave Maria Radio presents Christ is the answer with Father John Ricardo.

One of my favorite things to do as a priest is to journey with our brothers and sisters as they explore becoming Catholic in the RCIA program.

The oddity is that oftentimes those who come into the church are the best educated Catholics that there are.

It seems that what we need is something like RCIA for Catholics,

for those of us who've grown up with the faith and have never really learned it.

So I invite you to join those coming into the church as they learn about the beauty of our faith

and hope as well that it will help to draw you ever closer to the God

who is truth and love. As we begin tonight, I want to say a couple of things, first of all.

The danger oftentimes of giving talks is that you just kind of pull something out of a can,

and the moment you pull something out of a can, it's dead, and the spirit's not in it.

I try anyway to always really ask

the Lord what it is he wants to show, which is usually what he wants to show me, and then to pass

it on to you. Some of what we'll do tonight, obviously much of it, because it's the mass, and there

are certain things that you have to always talk about. Much of it has been said in other ways,

but I don't want to merely repeat some of the things that you can find on the website.

I alluded last week to a book called What Happens at Mass by Father Jeremy Driscoll.

It's the greatest single book that I know of in really explaining what happens when we come to Mass.

When I was in the seminary, as recently as five months before I was going to get ordained,

I didn't really have a clue what was happening at Mass. And it was not exactly something that I was looking forward to celebrating every day, which should unnerve you a bit, you know, if you're listening to me right now, because the purpose of a priest is for the Eucharist. Everything else flows around that and comes from it. And I prayed somewhat with urgency and alarmed, Lord, I'm getting close to the day when I'm

going to stand at the altar here, and I'm not real excited about that, so I could use

a little help.

And he gave me this man, Jeremy Driscoll, who taught me my last semester when I was studying

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