For Phillip

In the 4th century, St. Ambrose wrote this about baptism and chrismation (the word that was used at the time for confirmation.)

Recall then that you have received the spiritual seal, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence, the spirit of holy fear in God's presence. Guard what you have received. God the Father has marked you with his sign; Christ the Lord has confirmed you and has placed his pledge, the Spirit, in your hearts.

We don’t always guard what we have received. We usually don’t. That is the gist of the parable of the Prodigal Son, which begins:

And he said, A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me. And he divided unto them his living. (Luke 15:11-12)

Confirmation is perhaps the rite or sacrament that most symbolizes this moment - it is when we ask for, and receive, our adult inheritance, such as we will have it in this world. The fullness of our baptismal grace is given to us. Ownership of our faith is given to us. Of confirmation, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches in much the same way all the others do:

By this anointing the confirmand receives the "mark," the seal of the Holy Spirit. A seal is a symbol of a person, a sign of personal authority, or ownership of an object. Hence soldiers were marked with their leader's seal and slaves with their master's. A seal authenticates a juridical act or document and occasionally makes it secret. (1295)

Just as with the prodigal son, we’re given ownership of our faith in confirmation. It is no longer our parents’ faith, in which we participate. We are now custodians of it. But sadly, the prodigal son, having become the custodian of his estate, runs off to a life of “dissolute living” and squanders it all.

But the estate granted by Confirmation is an estate whose riches have no end. I myself have run off and “squandered it all” many times in my life - I can’t tell you how many times, even in little ways. But as with baptism, Confirmation “too imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark, the ‘character,’ which is the sign that Jesus Christ has marked a Christian with the seal of his Spirit by clothing him with power from on high so that he may be his witness.” (1304) You cannot spend it all. For each time you return to the Father genuinely saying, “Father I have sinned”, He rejoices saying, “...for this my child was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”

I’ve seen kids show up for confirmation who then never darken the doors of a church again. It is depressing - one such kid was my own daughter. After Bishop Colli anointed her and laid hands on her, we got about six more months of church out of her. Then she was too cool, unconvinced of the reality of our faith... eventually wouldn’t even talk about it.


But it is an “indelible spiritual mark.” Something has happened - not by our power, but by God’s power. We are his, and can do nothing about it. Things happen in peoples’ lives, profound things, and when these events are encountered with only the vaguest memory of the God who was with them at Confirmation, people remember that emptiness is not all such moments need bring. And they do come to realize that they have an inheritance they never even knew about, one they thought they had spent.

I always felt guilty about the results of my daughter’s confirmation. I was a skeptic when I was younger, and I occasionally made disparaging remarks about the hymns my wife and daughter sang around the house - hymns that (quite ironically) it is now my job to sing every Sunday. I finally came around to appreciating what this was for them only as my daughter’s Confirmation came and went, and when my daughter fell away, I was doubly disappointed - more in me than in her; I worried that my prior faithlessness was responsible for hers. Had I ruined my daughter’s own treasure in Heaven?

I needn’t have worried. God’s insistent voice is always there when the really big things happen in life. At the Easter Vigil this year, I sat in the pews beside my very pregnant daughter and her lad as we watched a dozen adults being confirmed. She leaned over and whispered to me, “Dad.... when do you think would be the best time to have the baby baptized?”

All-powerful God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by water and the Holy Spirit
you freed your sons and daughters from sin
and gave them new life.
Send your Holy Spirit upon them
to be their helper and guide.
Give them the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of right judgment and courage,
the spirit of knowledge and reverence.
Fill them with the spirit of wonder and awe in your presence.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. (The Latin Rite prayer of confirmation.)