Scrutinies

**Scrutinies: Why are they repeated? Taken from Team RCIA Posted by Rita Ferrone **
First, the Scrutinies need to be repeated because they are like an exercise. Only by doing them repeatedly do we get the hang of it. Spiritual therapy of this sort makes us stronger, just as physical exercise makes us strong in body. Scrutinies are a kind of exercise of the spirit. Discerning sin, and turning to receive God’s grace make us firmer in resolve, and strengthens our will for doing good.

Second, we repeat the Scrutinies because we don’t know how deep our trouble is until we start looking. We see more clearly, each time, that we still have a way to go. Recall the story of a healing in the eighth chapter of Saint Mark’s gospel. The evangelist tells of a blind man at Bethsaida whom Jesus heals, but the healing of his sight proceeds only in stages. Jesus puts saliva on his eyes, and lays hands on him, and asks him if he can see now. The man replies I can see people, but they look like trees, walking. (Mark 8:24). So Jesus lays his hands on him again, and only then does the healing become complete. It took more than one try. How remarkable this episode of gradual healing is, for Mark. In the other stories Mark tells, things usually happen at lightening speed. His gospel uses the word immediately more than any other sacred author—thirty-four times! There is no waiting around in Mark’s gospel. But here it takes a second touch to free the man’s sight. A parable for us, indeed.

The Scrutinies—three of them—are experiences of the freeing touch of grace, which restores our sight, letting us see good and evil, sin and grace, as they really are. The Scrutinies are repeated so that we will learn to see well. Haste can short-circuit the process. We need to repeat the Scrutinies so that the elect will see sin and grace not just as shadows, trees walking, but in the contours of sharply defined people, places, and events.

The ritual and catechetical events of the initiation process prepare for the sacraments. But they also teach people the skills they will need for living as faithful disciples long after initiation. The goal of initiation is forming disciples who live the Christian life. Initiatory events are not left behind once they are over. Their echoes remain. Their pattern is retained in us, as the template for future experiences. They become part of ourselves as valuable ideas, worthy habits, learned responses, and treasured relationships that will be used and tested again and again in our ongoing human experience. That is yet another reason why the Scrutinies must be celebrated well. Passionately. And with a clear sense of their purpose. The assembly too, year after year, has the benefit of these rites. The faithful do not receive a laying on of hands year after year—that is for the elect—but they too can pray for clearer sight. We all need it.
 * After Initiation**