Recently in sacraments Category

One of my nephews had his Confirmation in the Church a few days ago. Confirmation is the sacrament of the Holy Spirit, where a person formally receives the Holy Spirit into their lives. Catholics carry on this action that was first described in the Bible in Acts 8. When the apostles heard that a number of Samaritans heard about the Good News of Jesus, they went out to confirm them in the Faith:

Now when the apostles, who were in Jerusalem, had heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John. Who, when they were come, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost. For he was not as yet come upon any of them; but they were only baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands upon them, and they received the Holy Ghost. And when Simon saw, that by the imposition of the hands of the apostles, the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, Saying: Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I shall lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said to him: Keep thy money to thyself, to perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

A note of vocabulary may be prudent here: The Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost are the same thing, er, are the same member of the Trinity. The terms can be used interchangeably, though in today's parlance, they seem to evoke different imagery. "Ghost" is the English version of the German word "geist", which approximates the word "spirit". But "ghost" also conjures up images of cartoonish floating white blobs, so the general trend has been to refer to the third person of the Blessed Trinity as the "Holy Spirit". Yet because "spirit" also seems a bit disembodied and impersonal, it leaves something to be desired. As well. Such is the weakness of our language, I suppose. Either term can be used interchangeably. But I digress.

In any measure, Confirmation is the charge of those first apostles that bishops carry on to this very day. Bishops of the Church are the holders of those original apostles today. Bishops are consecrated by other bishops, and thus they have a documentable lineage--and somewhere in a file of unending length, every Bishop can trace themselves back to the Biblical era. While this might seem like a clever piece of trivia or cocktail party tidbit, it actually has significant theological implications for Christianity. The term is "apostolic succession", and is considered one of the four marks of the church, "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic", that Christians (strangely, not just Catholics) profess in the Nicene Creed that sets out the basic beliefs of a Christian.

And so when bishops in 2009 lay their hands on the Confirmands today, they carry the same authority as those apostles in the book of the Acts of the Apostles quoted above. In some circumstances, bishops give this authority to regular priests who can confer the sacrament in their stead: the most notable example of this happens on the Easter Vigil every year where converts are received into the Church and confirmed by the priests in their local parish.

The bishop will cup his hands (like you would do if you were warming your hands over a candle) and place them on the confirmand's head, praying that the Holy Spirit would come upon him or her. Then the bishop will dip his thumb into a tin of chrism, a greasy blend of oil and balsam that has been blessed by the bishop, and mark a cross on the forehead of the confirmand, saying "N., I sign thee with the sign + of the Cross, and I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation; in the Name of the Father + and of the Son + and of the Holy + Ghost." In the old days, they'd give you a gentle (or not-so-gentle) slap on the cheek to toughen you up as a newly made soldier of Christ. But those days have come and gone in the new form of the sacrament.

Where the prayer above says N., the bishop will use the person's confirmation name. A confirmation name is the name of a saint that the person chooses as spiritual inspiration. Heh. I was confirmed when I was 14 years old (the conventional age for confirmation is sometime between second grade and junior year of high school unless a person converts to the Church later in life or otherwise missed their confirmation) and just wanted to choose a unique name. I picked Saint Wenceslaus. Seriously. I was a peculiar 14-year-old. Oh, I had some rationale, of course. I'm sure my Catholic grade school wouldn't have let me pick something just as a spectacle. Wenceslaus was the Duke of Bohemia in the modern-day Czech Republic; his mother was a pagan who, before Wenceslaus took control of the duchy, tore down most of the Catholic churches in Bohemia. Good King Wenceslaus (yes, of the Christmas carol) spent his short life as a duke rebuilding those churches before he was ultimately killed by his brother for faith-based political reasons. Back then, I was the Senior Patrol Leader in my Boy Scout Troop and it was my responsibility to plan and run our weekly Troop meetings. As I saw it then, the previous Senior Patrol Leader was suffocating the troop by just playing two-hand-touch football in the parking lot every week instead of holding meetings--each successive meeting was like trying to rebuild a proper Scout Troop with scouts who didn't want to be there. I thought Wenceslaus could commiserate with me. Ultimately I had a better fate than Wenceslaus; my year as SPL was up and someone else took the position from there. I wasn't murdered from someone else in the Arrowhead patrol to ascend to the throne. Lucky me!

The late Bishop Marion Forst confirmed me that year. He was gentle, kind and jovial bishop who chuckled when he read my confirmation name. He asked if I was Czech. "No, Wenceslaus was Bohemian", I replied, not knowing that Bohemia was in (then) Czechoslovakia and had a far-different context than geography. The bishop smiled and announced to the full parish, "Oh, he's a Bohemian!" Hahaha. Laughs all around! Har har! But he confirmed me and welcomed the next boy in line after I moved on, feeling lucky that I didn't get a slap. When Bishop Forst died in 2007, he was the oldest bishop in the United States. It's too bad. I would have liked to talk to him as an adult--his Excellency was among the last men on earth to have attended all 4 sessions of the Second Vatican Council. I bet he had some stories.

My nephew took the name "Boniface" as his confirmation saint. Saint Boniface was known as the "Apostle of Germany" for his work to convert the people of Deutschland. In one particularly famous story, Boniface once found a group of people worshipping some pagan god in the form of a 6-foot-wide oak tree. He took off his shirt, picked up an ax and cut down the tree while the people looked on aghast. Boniface jumped up on the stump and shouted to the crowd "How stands your mighty god? My God is stronger than he!" Boniface, predictably, was martyred shortly thereafter. I don't know what motivated my nephew to pick this medieval saint as his confirmation patron. But knowing 14-year-old-boys, I suspect it has something to do with the cool-sounding name "Boniface".

Adults who go receive the sacrament often pick a different kind of name, usually dedicating themselves to people with bittersweet stories of trial and redemption like St. Monica or with steadfast courage like St. Thomas More. Not to say that either St. Boniface or St. Wenceslaus don't have their own credibility, of course. I'm just saying that adult confirmands often have more complex reasons for choosing the saints as patrons than a cool sounding name. As one of the world's most recently canonized saints, St. Zygmunt Gorazdowski might be a real inspiration for people. But he also might get the interest of a 14-year-old boy for being the last canonized saint in the alphabet.

But confirmation is, of course, about more than just cool-sounding names and a chance to shake hands with a bishop. It is the moment where a Catholic dedicates him/herself to Christ and His Church; it is where the confirmand receives the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Gifts are particular traits that are present in a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) writes:

The gifts of the Holy Ghost are of two kinds: the first are specially intended for the sanctification of the person who receives them; the second, more properly called charismata, are extraordinary favours granted for the help of another, favours, too, which do not sanctify by themselves, and may even be separated from sanctifying grace. Those of the first class are accounted seven in number, as enumerated by Isaias (11:2-3), where the prophet sees and describes them in the Messias. They are the gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety (godliness), and fear of the Lord.

The gift of wisdom, by detaching us from the world, makes us relish and love only the things of heaven.

The gift of understanding helps us to grasp the truths of religion as far as is necessary.

The gift of counsel springs from supernatural prudence, and enables us to see and choose correctly what will help most to the glory of God and our own salvation.

By the gift of fortitude we receive courage to overcome the obstacles and difficulties that arise in the practice of our religious duties.

The gift of knowledge points out to us the path to follow and the dangers to avoid in order to reach heaven.

The gift of piety, by inspiring us with a tender and filial confidence in God, makes us joyfully embrace all that pertains to His service.

Lastly, the gift of fear fills us with a sovereign respect for God, and makes us dread, above all things, to offend Him.

So we receive wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord at confirmation.

Well gentle reader, I can tell you that I was validly confirmed, yet I've spent a tremendous amount of my life since then acting totally without wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety or fear of the Lord. So was it all a scam? No, of course not. The gifts of the Spirit require sanctity to be efficacious--people have to be living a life inspired by Christ to be filled with these gifts. It reminds me of the rebuke from the ancient Jewish prophet Isaiah:

Hear, ye deaf, and, ye blind, behold that you may see. Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, but he to whom I have sent my messengers? Who is blind, but he that is sold? or who is blind, but the servant of the Lord? Thou that seest many things, wilt thou not observe them? thou that hast ears open, wilt thou not hear? And the Lord was willing to sanctify him, and to magnify the law, and exalt it.

So it is with the Lord, his gifts are freely given to those who accept them and totally ignored by those who abdicate them.

As I continue to type this post, it occurs to me that maybe Wenceslaus might still be an inspiration to me-- albeit one that I haven't considered in many years and in a way that I would have never consider until lately: So much of our world, of our Church, of our Faith has been destroyed by people with strange motivations. I will hesitate to call some "pagans", the evidence can speak for itself. Indeed, sometimes I am convinced that we need more holy leaders like St. Wenceslaus to rebuild a destroyed and devastated Church. Ack. This was way beyond my imagination as a happy and strange young kid. But so it is. And so it will be that the rebuilders and restorationists will have their reputation slaughtered by their brothers in the faith. Character assassination. Ecclesial martyrdom. We could all use another helping of those gifts.

St. Wenceslaus, pray for us.