Last Wednesday night at Holy Family Church, Bishop Hugh addressed nineteen young people gathered with their families to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. He compared the event to an individual Pentecost. Still, he advised them not to get disappointed if there were no spectacular tangible signs like those reportedly appearing at the first outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Certainly, by the end of that Mass, the temperature inside the church reached 25 Celsius, but it hadn’t been caused by tongues of fire appearing above the heads of the newly confirmed (there were none). Although the event was quite uplifting, it wasn’t accompanied by anything supernatural. Nor were there any noticeable external changes to those who had received the sacrament of confirmation. And yet, something had changed for each of them deep in their souls.
The event last Wednesday night nicely corresponds with today’s gospel reading. Facing a large crowd of people, “he felt sorry for them because they were harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd.” In response to the situation, Jesus gathered his disciples and sent them out with a mission. However, those he dispatched had already been his companions for a long while. Similarly, those who received the sacrament of confirmation had started their journey several months previously, regularly took part in preparation classes and learnt about their faith. Back to the gospel. St Matthew diligently listed their names. We must remember that in the Bible, names played a much more important role than simply labelling people. The name defined its bearer’s call, vocation or mission; that’s why some individuals were named before their birth, like John the Baptist or Jesus, or had their names changed later in life to reflect a new call or role. For example, God renamed Abram (exalted father) as Abraham (father of a multitude) to indicate his importance in His plans. Jesus renamed Simon as Peter, announcing his future role as the rock on which the Church would be built. Another important aspect of listing the names of those chosen by Jesus was to show that they had been carefully selected rather than randomly picked out from the crowd. Prior to the Sacrament of Confirmation, the candidates had to choose a new name for themselves; traditionally, it’s one of the canonised (i.e., officially recognised) saints. The bishop used those new names when he conferred the sacrament. The mission was the final similarity between the gospel and last Wednesday night’s event. What mission?
We tend to consider receiving sacraments (baptism, first communion, confirmation, matrimony) as individual, self-contained, and rather inconsequential one-off events. Consequently, we often pay much attention to the ceremonial, ornamental and decorative aspects of the event and much less to its spiritual or religious meaning. This is why we have a significant proportion of people who emerge out of nowhere to baptise their babies, disappearing from view afterwards, re-emerging several years later in time for their children’s first communion, disappearing again for a few years until the time of the now teenagers’ sacrament of confirmation, and then disappearing again, this time for good. Or until they have decided they fancy a Catholic wedding. The main flaw in this approach is that a living faith has very little chance (if any) to develop between those events and effectively dies, being reduced to mystifying rituals, “valued” mainly as “traditions”. On the other hand, the Church sees those sacraments conferred at various stages of life as stepping stones in developing a mature kind of religious faith that has a genuine impact on one’s life by instilling a set of values, priorities, attitudes and moral spine. Such a process takes years and goes along with the natural development of children. That means they must be immersed in their home’s positive religious environment and local church community. Having had such a spiritual experience, religious education in the form of first communion or confirmation classes makes sense. It can help them understand their experience and turn it into a more real-life-relevant spiritual tool. In this maturing process, I see the sacrament of confirmation as the start of Christian apprenticeship. This is where I find the final similarity between last Wednesday’s confirmation and today’s gospel.
Those disciples selected by Jesus and sent out on a mission were not a finished product. Having followed Jesus, watched Him, learnt from Him and been taught by Him, they were now being sent off to try out what they had learned. Their mission’s scope was significantly restricted: “Do not turn your steps to pagan territory, and do not enter any Samaritan town; go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” At this stage of their formation, getting into the inter-religious controversies of the times would be too distractive. Rather than likely pseudo-theological unproductive clashes, their primary mission was that of service to others, to people in need in various forms of help, as listed by Jesus: “proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils.” In other words, they were to provide relief and support. The final line is interesting, too: “You received without charge, give without charge.” This was an old-fashioned way of calling to work as volunteers. In the process, they would have positive and negative experiences; they would succeed and fail; they would be elated at one point and frustrated at another. All those experiences, positive and negative alike, would provide insight into their strong and weak points, to improve on the former and strengthen the latter.
In the Sacrament of Confirmation, we all received the Holy Spirit and His gifts to serve others, those within the community of the Church and those outside it. The strength of our local parish community, as well as the Church worldwide, comes as a result of our active involvement. This call applies to the nineteen teenagers confirmed last Wednesday, but not exclusively. It applies to each one of us, whether you received your Sacrament of confirmation one or ten or forty years ago. In such a way, the prophecy from the first reading will continue to be fulfilled in us: “I will count you a kingdom of priests, a consecrated nation.”
