The Easter season comes to close, not in a quiet way, but with wind and fire and water, as I wrote about last year for Pentecost. The Power of the Holy Spirit and Confirmation For further reading, the Catholic Culture library has his 2002 pastoral letter Send Forth Your Spirit and also the 2011 Hillenbrand Lecture entitled The Sacrament of Confirmation. He already made these changes in his previous diocese of Fargo. My conviction comes from trust in Jesus Christ and the real, transformative power of the graces he pours out upon every person in the sacraments.Īrchbishop Aquila is aiding his flock to become saints, the universal calling of all the faithful. He also expands on how the graces of the sacrament will help the children in this secular age to become saints, which is what I touched on two weeks ago when Bishop Silva of Honolulu made the same changes.īy imparting the graces of confirmation at an earlier age, it is my hope and conviction that children will be better prepared to live a life of authentic discipleship, even as society becomes more secular. Instead, as Pope Francis said in a 2013 address to Italian young people, “what is this sacrament called? Confirmation… No! Its name has changed: the ‘sacrament of farewell.’”. Unfortunately, the current confirmation process is not consistently forming authentic, lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ. The Eucharist completes initiation and is the lifelong sacrament that nourishes and strengthens us to be authentic disciples. In other words, the sacraments of initiation are “are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it” (Catechism, no. This was followed by confirmation, which perfects the grace of baptism, fills us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and prepares us to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. In the early Church, Christian initiation began with new life in Christ through baptism. He explains the theological reasons for changing this order: While baptism will continue to take place at its normal time, confirmation will take place in the third grade, during the same ceremony as first Eucharist. Under the restored order, the sacraments of initiation will be conferred as follows: baptism, confirmation and Eucharist. His pastoral letter Saints Among Us was published on May 24, 2015: Restoring the order of the sacraments of initiation made the headlines again this week as Archbishop Aquila of Denver made an announcement that he will be implementing this change in his diocese.
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