Two boys share the light of Christ during the Easter Vigil Mass April 14 at Our Lady of Victory. Photo by Sandy Bertog

Parishes welcome neophytes at Easter Vigil

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

When the Stalter-Garity family gathered for Easter dinner April 15, 6-year-old Lyle Stalter started the prayers before the meal.

“Thank you for having the rest of my family join me in being Catholic,” the little boy said, according to his mother, Julie Garity.

Garity, her husband, Neil; Neil’s two children; and the couple’s infant son, Jack, all received sacraments of initiation into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil Mass at Our Lady of Victory on the Northwest Side.

They joined Lyle, who was baptized as a baby because his father is Catholic, as members of the church.

“I think he always looked at himself as being the only Catholic in the family,” said Garity, who had joined her husband and Neil Jr., 12, and Gina, 10, in RCIA classes almost two years ago.

The Garitys were among 40 people receiving sacraments of initiation at the parish and more than 2,200 in the Archdiocese of Chicago. The U.S. Bishops Office for Evangelization estimates that more than 70,000 people in the United States were received into the church at the Easter Vigil this year.

		‘The Gospel of the vineyard became their theme song. It doesn’t matter when you are called or how long you work. Everyone gets paid the same.’

The Easter Vigil celebration brought the family together within the extended family they had found at Our Lady of Victory, especially in its RCIA program. Auxiliary Bishop Thad Jakubowski attended, and the parish borrowed a baptismal font from the Office for Divine Worship—a donation from St. Anne Parish in Barrington—to make baptism by immersion possible.

The evening was the culmination of more than two years in the RCIA program for Neil Garity and his older two children, and about two years for Julie Garity.

“It was such a good experience for us,” Garity said. “It’s kind of sad to see it end. But it’s kind of like a mom pushing her ducklings out on their own, and saying come back and ask if you have any questions.”

Mary Catherine Meek, the director of religious education at Our Lady of Victory, said the parish has a commitment to following the RCIA process outlined in church documents, including holding meetings year-round and having participants spend at least a year in the program before being initiated.

“The people who have been in the process for two years, they realize how much more they learn, and the church has become so much a part of their lives,” Meek said, adding that nobody in the program has left for a parish with a shorter RCIA program. “What would they be doing if they were through? They’d still be coming to church every Sunday?” she said.

“The Gospel of the vineyard became their theme song. It doesn’t matter when you are called or how long you work. Everyone gets paid the same.”

RCIA programs teach adults, adolescents and older children about the church, answer their questions and provide spiritual direction and spiritual formation. Catechumens and candidates would attend Mass together every Sunday, leaving the church for their own meeting after the Liturgy of the Word.

Father Philip Cyscon, pastor of Our Lady of Victory, said the RCIA program at his parish seemed to be its own best advertisement.

“People who weren’t necessarily thinking about being Catholic have been drawn in by their spirituality,” he said.

The new Catholics—now called “neophytes”—will continue learning about the faith during the Easter season, the seven-week period of mystagogia, when they are called to enter into the mysteries of the church.

For many, receiving the sacraments provided a profound sense of homecoming.

“I felt like a weight was taken off of me,” said Linda Regalado, who was initiated at Resurrection Parish on the Northwest Side. Her parents were Jewish, but she was raised without practicing the religion. Her husband and children are Catholic. “I’m not different anymore. I belong.”

“It was an incredible sense of coming home,” said Elaine Kindler, who was received into full communion at St. Vincent Ferrer in River Forest. Kindler is executive director of Aid for Women, a Catholic pregnancy resource center in Chicago. “It was a sense that for me, the search for a spiritual home is over.”

And 10-year-old Gina Garity—getting baptized and having her first Communion years after her Our Lady of Victory classmates, and being confirmed years before them—finally feels secure.

“She lost sleep for days before Saturday,” Julie Garity said. “It was a very difficult week, and she said to me, ‘The devil is trying to make this week difficult for me. He’s getting in my way.’ After the service Saturday, she said, ‘I’m safe now.’ She can finally say she’s safe now.”

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