Last month I indicated that our diocese has begun a study and review of the age of Confirmation. This topic will be the focus of the Pastoral Ministry Days gathering on March 5-6. Presently, the sacrament of Confirmation is administered to senior high school students. However, like other dioceses around the country, we are troubled by the fact that nearly one-half of the youth who are eligible do not receive Confirmation. Undoubtedly, this is a pastoral problem that needs attention.

    I also noted that some U.S. bishops have restored the original order of the sacraments of Christian initiation — Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist – by administering Confirmation prior to or as part of First Communion. I briefly reviewed the history of how that original order changed into the present practice of celebrating Confirmation after First Communion.
It would be a mistake to approach this discussion about Confirmation solely from a technical point of view by treating it as a problem to fix or restoring the original order just because it is original. What we should do instead is review what we believe about the sacrament of Confirmation, which, of course, is a question of theology.

Legem credendi lex statuat orandi
    This Latin phrase, which was coined by Prosper of Aquitaine, a fifth century disciple of St. Augustine, simply means that what the church does at worship is the foundation for what the church believes. Faith, then, is not so much an intellectual assent to doctrinal formulations, i.e., “I believe this, this and this.” Rather, as the noted scholar Aidan Kavanagh, OSB, notes in his work On Liturgical Theology (p. 91), faith is “a way of living in the graced commonality of an actual assembly at worship before the living God ... Therefore, Christians do not worship because they believe. They believe because the one in whose gift faith lies is regularly met in the act of communal worship …” This insight reminds us that the church recognizes Confirmation as a sacrament given to her from the Lord. It is a sacrament from which we have much to learn and in our worship we are trying to learn those things.

    We need to keep this ancient principle in mind as we discuss the theology of Confirmation, simply because over the years our understanding about this sacrament has become unclear, if not ambiguous. For instance, when I was confirmed in the fourth grade, I was told that the bishop “slapped” us to make us strong as we became a soldier of Christ. Today, that phrase is not used in catechetical material and appears nowhere in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). Instead, the catechism describes Confirmation as bringing an increase in and deepening of the grace we received in Baptism, uniting us more firmly to Christ as we share in his Sonship, perfecting our bond with the church, strengthening us to witness to Christ, and increasing the gifts of the Holy Spirit in us (CCC 1303).

    Since the Second Vatican Council, scholars have written widely on Confirmation and all of the sacraments of Christian initiation. One insight that is helpful for our discussion is that Confirmation originally was a post-baptismal anointing by which the new Christian was either sent from the baptistry (oftentimes a separate building) into the church for the celebration of the Eucharist or welcomed into the assembly gathered for the Eucharist. Whether this was a rite of dismissal from the baptistry or a rite of welcome into the eucharistic assembly, the point is that after Confirmation the neophyte disciple of Jesus went into the eucharistic community, not out into the world.

    This rediscovery has enormous consequences for our discussion and already has had an impact on how the church and sacramental theologians speak about Confirmation. Thus, for example, the catechism notes that, “Preparation for Confirmation should aim at leading the Christian toward a more intimate union with Christ and a more lively familiarity with the Holy Spirit. … and awaken a sense of belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ, the universal Church as well as the parish community” (CCC 1309).

    Without question, Confirmation has much to do with sending us out into the world to witness to our faith. However, that witness is to be shaped and directed by one’s involvement in the church, which is most fully experienced when the priestly people of God celebrate the Eucharist. In other words, Confirmation gives an ecclesial shape and meaning to our Baptism and our Christian lives. It confirms that we are baptized, not just for ourselves, but for the community; that we are not witnesses to Christ on our own, but always in unity with others; that our gifts and graces and our lives belong to the community, the Body of Christ, for the salvation of the world.

    These theological insights, then, suggest a number of issues for our ongoing discussion. First, it is clear that we can only come to a deeper understanding of Confirmation if we also give greater thought and reflection as to what it means for us to belong to the church and what it means for us to gather together for the Eucharist. It also suggests that, if Confirmation is about entering into the eucharistic assembly so that the newly baptized are constantly reinitiated more deeply into the life of the church and increasingly configured to Christ as a member of his body, then our discussion of the proper age of Confirmation will be tied in some way to the proper age of receiving First Eucharist. It will also highlight the importance of good eucharistic celebrations if, in fact, the Eucharist is the moment when the newly baptized and all the baptized experience reinitiation. Here it is appropriate to recall that the Eucharist is the only repeatable sacrament of Christian initiation, whereas Baptism and Confirmation are administered only once.

    It also suggests that we would do well to highlight in our catechesis the significance of the anointing at Confirmation. The catechism rightly refers to the anointing we receive in Christian initiation as a consecration, by which we are given a share in the priesthood of Christ (CCC 1535). As the anointed, we join the anointed one, Christ, in his one eternal sacrifice for the salvation of the world (CCC 1322) when we celebrate the Eucharist. It is this experience that shapes, defines, and impels our mission into the world.

    These very rich understandings of Confirmation will greatly benefit our on-going discussion and will help focus our attention on issues that go beyond fixing a problem or restoring an order of the sacraments of Christian initiation just because that was the order in which they were celebrated in the past. As I look forward to expanding on these ideas during Pastoral Ministry Days, I once again thank the members of the Confirmation Task Force for their assistance in addressing the age of Confirmation in this diocese.