Greetings in Christ, all!
I’m so excited about our upcoming celebration of the Sacrament of Confirmation. On Tuesday we will gather with our bishop here at Holy Family and celebrate this beautiful sacrament. Please pray for all kids who will be confirmed.
When I first got here, there was a lot of discussion about how and when to do confirmation prep. As the world around us changes, the need for this sacrament has never been clearer, but neither has the challenge of getting kids together for preparation been more challenging. Our lives are full, our schedules are full and it’s tough to add “one more thing” to the calendar.
We’re working on it, I promise you. As we work on it, there are a few things that I’ll ask us to consider:
When I was a kid, confirmation prep involved classes and prayer, as well as some personal testimony. As I got older, I noticed some Churches piling on more and more requirements, often as a means of trying to connect kids to the Church in a meaningful way. Once kids are confirmed, we usually don’t see them very often again until they are ready to get married. This often leads to the people volunteering and working in the Church feeling used and some programs/parishes responded by making it more onerous to get confirmed. Here at Holy Family, we feel like that may be an understandable response, but not necessarily a healthy or helpful one.
Our goal is to work hard to create a meaningful and challenging program that ends up being a life-giving experience, one that prepares them to receive the Power of the Holy Spirit and understand what they are receiving. How to do that? How to balance our expectations with parents scheduling and priorities? Well, that’s what we are working on.
I am 100% confident in Deacon Dan and Katie’s ability to create something and recently, I realized that I may not have given them the freedom they need to do this in the way they feel best. I’ve asked them to dream and to dream big and to create a program that takes all their education and experience into account.
In the future you may (or may not) hear about changes in our program and I ask you to help with all of this; embrace it all with the understanding that we are trying to do our best to help spiritually while respecting the limits of practicality.
Our Sacraments are a gift from God; a way He connects to us. I pray that we embrace these gifts with all our hearts and set out to show the world what it looks like when we do so!
I’m so grateful to God for the gift that you all are to me.
fjk