topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
 Solemnity of Pentecost (B)
08 June 03


 

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 Advocatethe Spirit of truthso 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 Advocatethe Spirit of truthwho 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 selfishnesswhat St. Paul calls the “flesh” in today’s epistleand enslavement to the power of evil.  In the actual moment when this decisive turn in the direction of one’s life is sealedthat moment when the bishop anoints the candidate for Confirmation with Holy Chrismthe 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 confirmedas Jesus’ disciplesto 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 confirmednow filled with the Advocate, the Spirit of truthare 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 Advocatethe Spirit of truthpossesses 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 disciplesas confirmed as the apostles on Pentecost Sundayour 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 truththe Advocateis 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.

 

 

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