As a youngster,
receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation struck me to be a very important
event in my life. I don’t know why this was so, just that it was
so.
I was confirmed when
I was in the third grade, at 7:00 p.m., on the evening of April 6th,
1964, to be precise. Bishop Wycisilo, an auxiliary bishop of the
Archdiocese of Chicago at the time and later, bishop of Green Bay,
Wisconsin, confirmed me. My mother picked my confirmation “name,” St.
Jude, the patron of impossible cases.
At the Confirmation
ceremony, I recall Bishop Wycisilo asking questions from the catechism.
Of course, all of us had memorized the answers. When the Bishop asked a
question, I raised my hand (I guess it would be more accurate that I
flailed my arm in the air) and he called on me to answer the question.
So, I stood up and, after I answered the question correctly, I don’t
know if I turned around and waved my hands in the air to receive
congratulatory applause like Ralphie Parker did when he fantasized about
receiving an A+++++++ on his composition in The Christmas Story,
but I do know that all of my buddies said that I did. And it is true
that I sported black rimmed glasses and a crew cut on Confirmation day.
My sponsor was my
big cousin, Billy. At the time, he had just finished boot camp at Paris
Island and showed up just in time for the ceremony wearing his Marine’s
blues. The uniform was impressive and I was pretty proud of him. For a
Confirmation gift, Billy gave me twenty bucks…which was a lot of money
to a third grader. That really impressed me, probably cementing in my
mind just how important Confirmation was.
The most memorable
part of the ceremony, however, was when the Master of Ceremonies read
from the cards containing our first and last names and confirmation
names as well. Everything seemed to be going fine until, when I was
positioned to kneel in front of Bishop Wycisilo, the Master of
Ceremonies said: “Nomen (that is, in Latin, “name”) Judas.”
I was absolutely flabbergasted. I didn’t even know the word at the time
but I sure know what it felt like. I jumped to my feet and stopped the
ceremony right there on the spot. Looking at the Master of Ceremonies,
I asserted, “I am not Judas. My mom wants me named Jude!” The
Master of Ceremonies pushed me to my knees and said something like,
“Shut up kid and kneel down. You’re Judas.” Then, Bishop Wycisilo
anointed me and slapped me silly.
We remember all
sorts of important events in our lives. We recall the people and
sometimes we can even recall the peculiarities associated with an
event. Some of the events we remember are happy events. Remember your
first “true” love, your first date, and the senior prom? How about your
wedding and the births of your children or grandchildren? Some other
events are sad and sometimes painful to remember. Can you remember
being betrayed by a friend? How about getting seriously ill? Can you
recall committing a serious sin? Do you remember the death of a parent,
a spouse, or perhaps worse yet, the death of a child or grandchild? I
believe we can remember these important events in our lives because
these events have helped us to identify who we are, mostly for the
better but sometimes for the worse.
How really important
and significant an event was the Sacrament of Confirmation in your
life? Do you remember the date of your Confirmation? Can you name the
bishop who confirmed you? Who was your sponsor? Do you remember the
Saint’s name you chose to model your discipleship after? Like your
namesake, can you identify any suffering you endured for proclaiming
Jesus’ teaching when you’d rather have kept silent?
For all of us who
have been confirmed, remembering what we were given and the freedom we
tasted at our Confirmation is important if only for the reason that it
becomes all to easy not only to forget our confirmation but, more
importantly, to allow selfishness to creep into our lives, to lock the
doors to others and their needs, and to forget that Jesus has given us
the Advocate―the
Spirit of truth―so
that as his disciples we can bring salvation to the whole world.
A couple of weeks
ago, we celebrated the conferral of the Sacrament of Confirmation in our
parish. During the season of Lent, each of the candidates for
Confirmation came forward following Communion to announce their decision
to be confirmed, why they made that decision, the service activity or
activities they engaged in, as well as the person who would be their
sponsor and why that person was chosen. Concluding their short
speeches, each of the candidates also asked us to pray for them as they
continued their final preparations to receive the sacrament. And, for
our part, we offered our congratulations to the candidates and prayers
for them.
I am sure that this
year’s candidates, as part of their preparation for the Sacrament of
Confirmation, were told that the coming of the Holy Spirit into their
lives would be an important moment, maybe not quite as memorable as my
Confirmation, but memorable nonetheless. By making a personal
commitment to be a disciple of Jesus, not only would the Holy Spirit
endow them with special gifts, including the gifts of wisdom,
understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and awe before
God. In addition, by making this personal commitment to be a disciple
of Jesus, the Holy Spirit would become an intimate part of their lives.
From that day forward, the Holy Spirit would push the confirmed beyond
the locked doors of any fears so that they will be people of action, not
women and men who merely talk about being Jesus’ disciples but Jesus’
disciples in action.
With their much of
their lives about to unfold before them and with many challenges
awaiting them, the newly confirmed have been given the Advocate, the
Spirit of truth. Like the apostles at the first Pentecost and all of us
at our Confirmation, these newly confirmed have not been abandoned to
face a hostile and alien world, left to feel vulnerable and alone as
they confront the difficult challenges of growing up and maturing as
children of God in a secular and materialist culture that is driven by a
consumer ideology. No, by inviting the Holy Spirit to dwell in them and
to be a part of their lives, the newly confirmed actually are now
“possessed” by the Advocate―the
Spirit of truth―who
is the guarantee that Jesus’ teaching will always be available for the
newly confirmed to apply creatively as they make important decisions in
the coming years and decades of their lives.
Confirmation
symbolizes the inner transformation whereby women and men consciously
turn away from selfishness―what
St. Paul calls the “flesh” in today’s epistle―and
enslavement to the power of evil. In the actual moment when this
decisive turn in the direction of one’s life is sealed―that
moment when the bishop anoints the candidate for Confirmation with Holy
Chrism―the
newly confirmed experiences a taste of the freedom given to God’s
children. It’s sort of like the liberation one feels in the Sacrament
of Penance after honestly confessing one’s sin and experiencing God’s
forgiveness. But, in the Sacrament of Confirmation, the feeling isn’t
one of joyous liberation but of emboldened determination. One doesn’t
experience happiness but strength. It is this experience which enables
the confirmed―as
Jesus’ disciples―to
resist temptation and to allow the gifts of the Holy Spirit to take root
in their souls and to flourish in their lives.
Walking out of
Church, the newly confirmed―now
filled with the Advocate, the Spirit of truth―are
commissioned by Jesus to be teachers and guides as their lives reflect
the application of Jesus’ teaching to the situations which these young
people will confront in their homes, schools, and neighborhoods, in
their relationships with family members, friends, and acquaintances, and
in the privacy of their minds, hearts, and souls as well. The Advocate
is always present within them now, the guarantee that Jesus’ teaching
will always be present as the newly confirmed seek to live as God’s
children.
All of us know that
Jesus has commissioned us to speak out against evil and, because the
Advocate―the
Spirit of truth―possesses
us, we know what we must say. We may feel strongly about particular
evils, perhaps transpiring in the family or workplace, in the
neighborhood city, nation, or world. But, oftentimes, we fear the
consequences of bringing the truth we possess within out into the light
of day. By allowing fear about what might happen to determine what we
say and do, our selfishness risks holding Jesus’ teaching prisoner to
our self-consciousness and we begin to turn our backs on the commitment
we made at our Confirmation and to forget the great gift that we have
been given. That is a profound failure not only of discipleship but
also of offering our lives for the salvation of others.
In today’s gospel,
Jesus calls the Advocate a “gift” because the wisdom of the Holy Spirit
is beyond our natural powers to reason. It is this wisdom, the Spirit
of truth, that enables us to consider everything in our lives from God’s
perspective. It is this Spirit of truth which pushes us out from behind
the locked doors of the comfortable little worlds we craft for ourselves
and into full public view in the real world that is polluted by lies and
deceit, mistrust and hatred, as well as terror, conflict, and war. As
friends, as spouses, as parents, and as fellow citizens and co-workers,
when the fire of the Holy Spirit fills our souls, we are emboldened to
utilize our talents to rescue others from the darkness of sin, the
ignorance caused worshipping idols of human crafting, the fear of death,
and the disease of unbelief.
As confirmed
disciples―as
confirmed as the apostles on Pentecost Sunday―our
vocation is to “engage in temporal affairs and order them according to
the plan of God” (Lumen Gentium, #31). It doesn’t matter what
our occupation is. What really matters is that we proclaim Jesus’
teaching so that people will reject sin and experience the salvation
that Jesus has won for us through his suffering, crucifixion, and
death. Because the Holy Spirit possesses us, we do not have to fear
others or yield to social pressure and public opinion. Instead, filled
with the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus sends us as his disciples into
the world to change what can and must be changed.
It doesn’t matter
whether our Confirmation name is Mary, Joseph, Ann, or Joachim. We
might be named Peter, Paul, John, James, Theresa, Rose, Augustine,
Catherine, Francis, Clare, Gemma or, even, Jude. Witnessing to the
truth―the
Advocate―is
how we fulfill the promise we made when we invited the Holy Spirit to
possess us at our Confirmation, that is, to bring Jesus’ teaching to the
whole world. |