Dear Father,
I’ve read that some bishops are lowering the age of Confirmation. I feel this is wrong. Our parish has always had Confirmation for teenagers. We told them that if they went to religion classes, they could graduate from catechism and that we would throw them a party. How can we keep them interested in religion if this change happens closer to home?
-Kim
Dear Kim,
You are correct. Some bishops are lowering the age for the Sacrament of Confirmation. These bishops are not party killjoys, however. They are trying to kill the idea that Confirmation is a kind of graduation from religious education classes.
Graduation is a stepping stone to put aside the past and move on to something new. While there may be the feeling of accomplishment, graduation also means that you are done with something. When we graduate from high school, we throw away our books and notes.
Confirmation, on the other hand, is not a stepping stone from something that I’ve finished, like a high school education. It is a transformation that is meant to finish, complete, me. More accurately, it brings to fruition what was begun at my baptism. Confirmation is a strengthening sacrament. It strengthens me to carry out all that is required of a follower of Jesus Christ.
Baptism is new life in Christ. When I am baptized, I gain a new power to live for God, to worship God, and to belong to God rather than to this world. I become an adopted child of God through the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The water washes me clean of all that prevents the full life of the Trinity to be in me. I receive the gift of eternal life, which means that I will live forever with the Blessed Trinity.
It’s important to know that God wants us more than we could ever imagine. God instituted baptism precisely so that we could be freed from the clutches of the devil and his minions and live in freedom. It is possible, of course, to refuse to live with God by making choices that are destructive of self and others. Hell welcomes such persons who want to escape the loving embrace of God.
That said, the baptized life, as beautiful as it is, is incomplete. By way of analogy, baptism is like infancy. (St. Paul, on adulthood). Confirmation is akin to reaching maturity. At a certain age in our physical life, we grow up and begin to give more than we take. We live for others more than we live for ourselves. We take responsibility for the good of others, beginning with our family and extending to all of society. We are still the children of God but must not remain spiritual infants.
An essential aspect of the strengthening received in Confirmation is that we become soldiers, as it were, for Christ and the Church. No one can deny that we are engaged in a spiritual battle, contending with the powers of hell. Young people, more than ever, need the strengthening grace of Confirmation, especially in light of all the evils they encounter, not the least of which are available on phone and computer screens.
At Confirmation, we do not graduate as if we are finished with the life of grace. Confirmation deepens my divine life; it does not end it. This is the opposite of the notion of graduation whereby I end my period of education, throw away my books and move on to something different. As a Catholic who has received the gift of Confirmation, I don’t leave. I enter even more deeply into the Catholic life, life in and with and for God. I live as God intended Adam and Eve to live before their rebellion.
We might even consider that Adam and Eve wanted to “graduate” from Eden. They wanted freedom from God so they could live the way they wanted apart from His plan for their happiness.
Confirmation is the sacrament of living more freely, happily and fully all that God lays out for me. Rather than throwing away my books, especially the Bible, the Catechism and the lives of the Saints, I study them more deeply. Rather than “graduating” from Sunday Mass and leaving the Eucharist behind, I receive the grace to pray, to speak with and listen to the Blessed Trinity more intimately. Rather than going off in search of myself, I find the rich friendships to which the saints invite me. I see the Church as less an institution and more a spacious home with all my brothers and sisters centered on the most important thing in life: loving God and going to our eternal home.