Confirmation

EWTN Global Catholic Radio and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This 50-part series was recorded on phonograph records in the 1960s, and the sound quality is sometimes limited, but the Word of God spoken by Archbishop Sheen is timeless. And now, here is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Peace be to you. The greatest untapped reservoir of spiritual power is to be found in the Christian laity. It is mainly through the laity that the Church enters into the world. Laymen and laywomen are the meeting place of the Christian and the non-Christian. They are the bond between the sacred and the profane. The religious and the sacred. The laity fulfills his Christian vocation in the world. When he comes to church, he receives life and truth and grace. But he receives them for service. Service in the world. And in the world, this Christian truth and grace and life of his comes into an encounter with other men who may lack it, or certainly its richness. A Christian vocation is the exercise of the ordinary manifestations of life in such a way that the glory of God is made manifest. There is, of course, a twofold danger. Danger. One is that on the one hand, the Christian laity may form a kind of a ghetto. That is to say, consider their religious activities to be confined only within the Church and keeping the commandments. Then Christians huddle together in the kind of an igloo, completely divorcing faith and action. The other extreme would be to become so worldly that they can do nothing with it. Now, the result of this separation is that, I mean the separation of religion and the world, is that culture has emancipated itself from Christ and become demonic. The laity are to be effective, they have to do three things. First of all, they have to be conscious of the fact that they are members of the people of God. They belong to a worshiping community. And then secondly, they must be theologically literate. The Saint Peter said they should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in them. And then thirdly, they must communicate with the world as Christians. As Christians. They are involved with the world. As John Donne so beautifully put it, no man is an island, entire and of itself. Every man is a piece of a continent, a part of the main. If a cloud be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were, as well as if the manners of friends of thine own house were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. Therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. No one, therefore, can expect to fulfill his Christian vocation or obtain any kind of personal integrity in the modern world who is not at home with computers, with slums, with races, with world affairs, with everything. Where the gospel intersects the world, it is the laity who stand at that point. As the cross stood at the intersection of the cultures and the civilizations of Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome. The laity cross all frontiers, and they do this in the name of Christ. As we see the laity come into church on Sundays, we ask them, do they really love one another? Are they a unified element in the community? Are they coming together just to fulfill an obligation, trying to avoid immortal sin, rather than to come and strengthen and feed a life which they ought to spread? Are they seeking a kind of selfish sanctification, forgetful that our blessed Lord said, for their sakes do I sanctify myself? Will they be very much like everyone else that is around them, except for just this weekly habit of coming to church? When others look at this band of the faithful, will they think, I ought to be like them, I ought to have their love and their truth and their inner peace? Too often it's just the opposite. So the laity therefore will have to come to a comprehension that our blessed Lord was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but in the world, on a roadway, in a town garbage heap, at the crossroads, where there were languages written upon the cross. Yes, they were Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, but they could just as well have been English or Bantu or Afrikaans. It would make no difference. He placed himself at the very center of the world, in the midst of smut and thieves and soldiers and gamblers, and he was there to extend pardon to them. This is the vocation of the laity, to make Christ known in the world. If then it be granted that the laity must go in the world, where will they find their power, their wisdom, and their courage, in order to be witnesses to Christ? If they are just left to their own power, they would be as weak as the apostles were, nine of them away from the garden and three in the garden sleeping. Since over and above the natural life there is a divine or supernatural life, there should be a sacrament, some visible sign by which they contact the power and the merit of Christ, some kind of channel that will pour away from Calvary down into their own souls to make them strong. Let's go back now into the natural order, and you will recall that for a living, one, a person must be born. Secondly, he must grow to maturity. Thirdly, he must assume the responsibilities of the society in which he lives. Since over and above the natural life there is a divine or supernatural life, one must be born to that divine supernatural life, and that is the sacrament of baptism. And then we have to grow into the supernatural life, and the sacrament that inducts us into this higher supernatural life is the sacrament of confirmation. We are born spiritually in one sacrament, become a citizen of the kingdom of God, and in the other we are drafted into God's spiritual army and into the lay priesthood of believers. Confirmation, like any other sacrament, is modeled upon the life of our blessed Lord. Our Lord had a double priestly anointing corresponding to two aspects of his life. First was the incarnation, and that made him capable of being a victim for our sins, because in the incarnation he took upon himself a body, a human nature with which he could suffer, and therefore redeem us from our sins. As God, he could not suffer. As man, he could. And this first aspect of the life of our blessed Lord culminated in his passion and death and resurrection. Now there was another aspect of his life, a second anointing, as it were, and that was the coming of the Holy Spirit in the Jordan, and that ordained him for the mission of preaching, the apostolate. And this reached its culmination, of course, as far as the Church was concerned, in Pentecost. But coming back to the life of our blessed Lord, the descent of the Holy Spirit on our Lord in the Jordan had a double effect on our Lord. First, it prepared him for combat, for battle, militancy. This is what the gospel states. Jesus returned from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit, and by the Spirit he was led out into the wilderness where he remained forty days tempted by the devil. Just as soon as he received the Holy Spirit, he entered into the battlefield of the conflict with Satan, who offered him the three easy ways from the cross. But the Holy Spirit did something else. It not only prepared him for combat, it also prepared him for preaching the kingdom of God. When our blessed Lord therefore appeared at Nazareth, he said, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me, sent me out to preach the gospel to the poor, to restore the brokenhearted, to bid the prisoners go free, and the blind who have sight, to set the oppressed at liberty, to proclaim a year when men find acceptance in the Lord. Now, after our blessed Lord had received the Spirit and fulfilled these two missions, he had instituted a sacrament, the sacrament of confirmation, by which this power and energy and strength of being a soldier of Christ and a witness to Christ in the kingdom of God passes into our souls. The ordinary minister of this sacrament is the bishop, and though in cases of extreme necessity, for example, illness and the like, a pastor may administer the sacrament. The one about to be confirmed kneels before the bishop, who extends his hands and prays, Almighty everlasting God, who has deigned to beget a new life in this thy servant by water and the Holy Spirit, and has granted him remission of his sins, send forth from heaven upon him thy Holy Spirit with the sevenfold gifts, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, Amen, the Spirit of counsel and fortitude, Amen, the Spirit of knowledge and piety, Amen. Feel him with the Spirit of the fear of the Lord, and seal him with the sign of Christ's cross, plenteous in mercy unto life everlasting. Through the same selfsame Jesus Christ thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God eternally, Amen. Then the bishop dips his thumb in holy chrism and anoints the forehead of the one to be confirmed, saying, first of all he gives the name, then, I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When he says these words, he makes the sign of the cross. Then he gives the one confirmed a slight blow on the cheek, saying, Peace be to you. Now the reason the slight blow on the cheek is given is in order to remind the one who is confirmed he must be prepared to suffer all things for the sake of Christ. This sacrament may be received only once because it leaves an indelible mark upon the soul. So does the sacrament of baptism and also the sacrament of holy orders. Because it may be received only once, as we may only go into maturity once in the natural order, there are many who neglect this inspiration. In order to make it very concrete, let us recall a very interesting story in the Old Testament. Remember the ancient prophet went to visit a widow woman whose sons were about to be sold in slavery because she had no money. This prophet was Elisha, and Elisha asked, What do you have in the house? She said, Just a little oil. He told her to go out and borrow vessels from the neighbors, all empty vessels. When they were gathered, he told her to begin pouring out the little oil that she had into the empty vessels. She began pouring, but the oil did not stop, and she filled one vessel, then another, and another, and another, until finally she said to her son, Give me yet another vessel. The son says, There is no more, and the oil stopped. Now, the oil in sacred scripture very often corresponds to the Holy Spirit, and the lesson therefore is that the Spirit of Christ that we receive depends also upon our emptiness, and the increase of that power from the moment that we receive the sacrament also depends upon our capacity to respond to Christ. There is no limit to God's love. There's no limit to his power to bless. He gives in an overflowing measure, far beyond our expectations, far beyond our deservings. We may stink the blessings for ourselves by not being in a fit state to receive them. We constantly see in the history of the Church where many blessings are forthcoming, just provided we would de-aggortize ourselves, and therefore the power of the laity to bear witness to Christ, to be his soldiers in the world, depends upon their humility, their emptiness. Then there's yet another lesson. There was once a Sunday school teacher who came before an empty room, and he said, where is the class? He could not see anyone to teach, and the priest said to him, you will have to go out and gather a class. He did so with a little exertion in the streets, and he had a class. So there are empty vessels all around us. They can be filled with the love of Christ. Any empty vessels in your home? None your neighbors? If you are a lawyer, do you know empty vessels? In your profession? There's a doctor? There's a nurse? Are there not many whose lives are aimless and destitute? I recently heard of the lawyer who died in Berlin. He was an unbeliever. He had a Catholic partner, a lawyer, and when his friend became ill, the Catholic lawyer visited him and said, know that you are about to die. Do not you think you ought to make your peace with God? And the dying partner said to him, he said, if Christ in your church has meant so little to you during your life, that you never once spoke to me about it, how can it mean anything to me at my death? The serious realization, therefore, of the sacrament of confirmation will make one seek to save souls, and if we save a soul, we have a very good chance of saving our own. Confirmation is the great social sacrament. It binds us to the world, to our neighbor, to humanity. It binds us not only to love God, but to love even those people who are seemingly unlovable. What does identification mean? I can tell you what it means by telling you how I failed. I visited a leopard colony in Africa where there were about 500 leopards. I brought with me 500 small silver crucifixes, one for each of the leopards. The first leopard came to me and his left arm off at the elbow. He held the stump of the arm up and around the shoulder was a rosary. He extended to me his right hand. I never saw such a mass of putrid, foul, noisome corruption as I saw in that leopard's hand. I held out the silver crucifix above it, and then I dropped it. It was almost swallowed up in that volcano of leprosy. I took this symbol of Christ's love for man, this symbol of God's identification with suffering humanity, and I refused to identify myself with one who was perhaps bearing on his body less putrefaction than I had in my own soul. And at that particular moment, there were 500 leopards in my hand. At that particular moment, there were 501 leopards in the camp, and I was the 501st, and the worst of all, because I refused to identify myself with this brother of mine. Then the thought came to me of the terrible thing that I was doing. And I pressed my hand in his hand-to-hand, and so on for all of the other leopards in the camp. Because of the sacrament of confirmation, I have to love all mankind, and as a priest, I have to identify myself with them. This identification you can carry over into your own life if you keep before you the symbol of fire. Fire has two great qualities, light and heat. The light is the symbol of truth. The heat is the symbol of love. Too often, we separate light and heat. We have the truth, but we have little zeal in love. The enemies have no truth, but they have zeal and love for their cause. In love for their cause. Confirmation would bid us to keep our truth and the love of truth together, and that's what our Lord meant when he said, I have come to cast fire, fire upon the earth. And what will I but that it be enkindled. God love you. This has been Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. For more information about this series, contact St. Joseph Communications at 1-800-526-2151. Outside the U.S., call 818-331-3549. And please join us again next time for Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio.