Averia 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

is 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. Seems seems that what we need is something like

our CIA for Catholics for those of us who have 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 going to 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 unerve 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 alarm, 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.

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