Sam made his Confirmation and chose the name Nicholas after his patron, St. Nicholas, whose feast day is in his birth month. Grandpa was his sponsor as a model of living the Faith.
Sam has been studying what it means to be Confirmed for the past year with quite a few of his school mates. At our children's Baptism, Larry and I chose for them to be Catholic. At a young person's Confirmation, that individual chooses to follow the Catholic Faith for himself.
Confirmation is administered by the Bishop. Our Bishop spoke directly to the young people and to the entire church as a shepherd and told them exactly what the Church teaches on marriage, violence, abortion and pornography. He continually emphasized that they would be emboldened by the Holy Spirit and strengthened by the grace of this sacrament to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the modern world out there "where it really counts". He minced no words but did so lovingly and took this one opportunity to reach this group of young people and their parents, family members and sponsors to be witnesses for Christ in all that they do. He had a teaching moment and he didn't squander it. You could hear a pin drop it was so quiet in the church as the congregation paid rapt attention. I was impressed and had a lot of respect for what he said and the manner in which he related to the youth.
These seventy ninth graders are only half of our parish's Confirmation class. There were another seventy students at the second Confirmation Mass that afternoon. Let us all hope and pray that these Confimandi be Soldiers for Christ and do great things for God and the Church by the power of the Holy Spirit in which they are now all sealed.
