by Susan Stevenot Sullivan

For Samantha and Joseph Ferrell Palm Sunday is not only the start of Holy Week, it is the final Sunday they will remain in the pew while the parishioners at St. John the Evangelist receive the Eucharist.

On Holy Saturday they will be baptized and receive First Eucharist.

“After Easter I won’t have to sit in the pew and let everyone walk by me,” said eight-year-old Joseph. “I can walk up there and be with the other people.”

“I sometimes have a dream about the Easter Vigil,” said Samantha, 10. “I see my family sitting there proud of me and then the whole congregation. I think of the water on my head and my First Eucharist. I wake up and think, ‘I can’t wait till it happens.’”

Their lives have already begun to change. Joseph proudly volunteers that the goes to church every Sunday. “I seem to pray more,” Samantha said. “I have different feelings about people I didn’t like before. It’s hard to explain.”

Samantha and Joseph are fifth- and third-graders respectively at Hendrix Drive Elementary. Samantha is president of the “Just Say No” (to drugs) club and the student representative to the school advisory committee. Both children are active in Scouting and sing in the parish youth choir.

The brother and sister are two of the eight children and 16 adults who make up the parish Order of Christian Initiation class preparing for full membership in the church at the Easter Vigil.

Children ages seven to 13 have been part of the Christian initiation program at St. John for about three years, according to Barbara Nichols, director of Religious education and youth minister.

At St. John, children in the OCI program are asked to attend the children’s Liturgy of the Word and the parish school of religion on Sundays. They are also asked to attend a special series of sacramental classes and to follow a six-week home study course.

Children are welcomed into the church the year after their parent or parents, Mrs. Nichols said. The siblings’ mother, Ann, was baptized last year at the Easter Vigil and sponsored by her aunt, Catherine Cunningham.

“I wanted to learn more before they went through the program,” Ms. Ferrell said. “There was a lot I didn’t know before I started the classes. I have a better understanding now so I can answer questions for them.”

This is the first year children have participated in the Christian initiation program on the archdiocesan level, according to Melanie Gravinese, director of the OCI at All Saints Church in Dunwoody and a member of the liturgy team for the archdiocesan Rite of Election held in February.

Children coming into the church when parents are received or return make up a fairly small part of the Christian initiation group as a whole, she said. Yet, their newly included numbers caused the total registry of participants in the Rite of Election to be greater than anticipated.

“We saw larger numbers because of the involvement of the children’s catechumenate,” she said.

Whether baptized (candidates) or unbaptized (catechumens), children preparing for full membership in the church present both benefits and challenges to a parish.

One of the benefits of involving children in the process, according to Father Franklin Forts, parochial vicar at St. John, is to help the adults perceive the OCI as a “family affair, a holistic, all-ages program that tries to bring everyone to the same understanding of church within their ability.”

In the company of adults, children can more easily perceive the serious, lifelong nature of the commitment they are undertaking, he noted.

Challenges abound as well.

“I’m not fully sold on the idea of kids and adults participating in a program staffed by volunteers and an already strapped pastoral staff,” Father Forts said. “Ideally there should be someone focused primarily on the OCI program...”

“We hold before us the vision of it (OCI) and do what we can in the meantime,” said Ms. Gravinese. “Each of our 11 years we have grown as a team. It’s never done. We’re never satisfied because we look to the vision.”

Father Forts said the central challenge for OCI programs, whatever the age of the participants, is the same in most parishes.

“The key challenge is to give people in the pew the idea that this is not just a way of bringing people into the church, that it is being church. It (OCI) is a way of talking publicly about what church is. (OCI) is not just something Father and a small group of parishioners do, but a total parish project. Having the children involved helps that (perception).”

When the whole community welcomes new members, everyone involved is renewed and strengthened, not just the catechumens and candidates.

“When people are initiated at All Saints that know at least 100 people, their stories, their concerns,” said Ms. Gravinese. “You cannot learn the faith by studying a book. You have to live it with other people.”

Father Forts pointed out that involving the whole parish in OCI could automatically solve some of the practical challenges OCI presents -- the need for more sponsors, more catechists and more people on the OCI team.

Whatever the age, whatever the format, the call to full membership and new life is being answered this Lent by 859 people in OCI across the archdiocese.

“There are a lot of reasons I want to be part of the church family,” said Samantha. “One reason is that a lot of people in my family are Catholic.”

“I want to be part of God’s family,” Joseph said, “so I can be closer to God.”