An upbeat responsibility that I have as Pastor is to read letters addressed to me by our youth who are preparing to celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation. Our youth express a sense of joy and eagerness to live the Faith of the Church.
The Sacrament of Confirmation marks a milestone on our common spiritual journey.
If only we continued to maintain the excitement and enthusiasm we experienced when we were confirmed, how vibrant and attractive our faith community would be for all people! Here is where we need to support one another. The Gift of the Holy Spirit that we receive in Confirmation empowers and enables us to be proactive in living out the Faith of the Church in an on-going way.
Living our Faith will come to expression in directions such as the following. There will be an on-going desire to want to celebrate Mass at least weekly and on special Holy Days, not primarily to fulfill an obligation, but to exercise the greatest privilege that the Lord offers to us, namely the opportunity to come together with one another to praise and thank Him and to ask for His Blessing and guidance for ourselves and for all other persons. As we develop in this way, we will experience an ever-growing bond of affection with those who gather for worship.
As we put ourselves proactively into our gatherings for Mass, we’re going to want to learn how this Faith that we celebrate relates to our daily lives. The love of the Lord that we celebrate has implications for our lives as individuals as well as for the groups to which we belong. As we develop, we come to a number of crossroads. We have to make choices that have moral implications. The choices that we make will affect ourselves and others in some cases for the rest of our lives and then for all eternity as well. As we take this truth to heart, we will recognize and gratefully respond to on-going opportunities for Christian formation that are offered to us regardless of our age.
Desiring to relate to others and to serve them as the Lord wants us to do this flows naturally from gathering weekly for worship and by responding faithfully to the on-going need for Christian Formation. The various vocational states offer specific frameworks from within which we can reach out to others as the Lord wants us to do this.
A majority of persons are called to marriage. In the light of our Faith, for those inclined toward marriage, there are a number of persons out there of the opposite sex from which a person can find one with whom to make the commitment to get married. For this reason, persons who are called to matrimony have both the opportunity and the responsibility to choose the person with whom they want to spend the rest of their lives together. As our Faith makes a God-intended impact upon us, hopefully those who marry will want to select for a marriage partner a person of the opposite sex who will help him/her to grow in love for the Lord and for whom growing closer to the Lord will be the top priority for that person. The Lord’s goal for all significant human relationships, particularly that of marriage, is that of serving as vehicles in and through which the Lord works to bring us to that fullness of life in Christ for which we have been redeemed and for which we yearn.
Celebrating the Sacrament of Confirmation reminds us that we are all on the journey to the fullness of life in Christ together. Let us continue to be open to receive and to extend to one another that support which the Lord offers us each day on our common journey.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Fr. Nelson Beaver – Pastor