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 R-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.

There's some bibliography that I kind of put together, some various readings.

Obviously, the catechism, a couple of documents in particular from Vatican 2 or from post-Vatican

two, two letters from Pope John Paul II.

Three books that I would very highly recommend.

First and foremost, a book by formerly Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict,

called God is Near Us, which is a phenomenal walkthrough on the mass in general and the Eucharist in particular.

It's very devotional as well as very theological and historical. It's a great

thing to bring to prayer. It's an extraordinary resource. The single best book that I know on the

Mass is a little book by a guy named Jeremy Driscoll. He's a Benedictine priest called What Happens

at Mass. It's not a pamphlet. It's probably 140 140 pages or whatnot especially for those of us who are

converts to the faith or who are just kind of coming back into the faith really we give it out

it to all the folks who are coming into the church through rcai it's the single best book i know

to give to somebody to understand what's going on when i was a seminarian my last, I had already been ordained a deacon. I'm anticipating priesthood, obviously, and looking forward to all that the Lord's going to call me to do and whatnot. And real candidly, I found the mass to be beyond boring. So as I'm sitting there anticipating all the things I'm going to celebrate, I'm eager to teach and to preach and hear confessions and

baptized and just evangelize. I mean, I used to pray over and over again, Lord, I don't have a clue what's going on here. And it doesn't do anything for me. So help. I know it's supposed to. This is going to be like the center of my life. You know, I'm going to do this every day until I die. I know we teach this as the source and summit of our lives,

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