Catholic Confirmation Quotes

I’ve earned the right to steal a little makeup. Scientists have confirmed that humanity is highly suggestible. If I intend to escape the jaws of consumerism, I have some hard choices ahead. I won’t say that the Devil is behind this, but Gretchen goes to Catholic school, she says the Devil can show up anywhere, and we wouldn’t even recognize him. Last week Gretchen told me, watch carefully to see how one thing connects to another.

Her mother was Jewish, but her father had insisted that she and Anne be raised Catholic. So she went to mass every Sunday as a child, received communion, went to confession, and was confirmed, but because her mother never participated in any of this, Alice began questioning the validity of these beliefs at a young age. And without a satisfying answer from either her father or the Catholic Church, she never developed a true faith.

Part of the magic was that Hitler told people what they wanted to hear. His pronouncements were not a challenge but a confirmation of his followers’ assumptions and preconceptions, an incitement to cast off the dreary restrictions of civility and rationality and allow their emotions full Dionysiac release, above all a permission both to maintain hope in the face of obdurate reality and to hate anyone or anything that was perceived to undermine that hope. Catholics, Socialists, and Communists, with intellectual structures of their own, were not as susceptible to him. He appealed to a devastated populace that, like him, had lost everything, including their established beliefs, felt a profound sense of grievance, and found consolation in a pan-Germanism that was part sentimentality and part utopianism, a sort of forward-looking nostalgia. The content of the speeches was important to that degree.

Stories abound of Waters confirming black and white children together in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Raleigh, of his insisting on having white and black acolytes at masses at which he presided, and of his requiring the diocesan newspaper to cover the activities of black Catholics and their parishes with as much interest as they covered those of white Catholics in the diocese.

it confirmed Mother’s secret conviction that the world had enough trouble without insisting all worship God the same way. There was room before the Throne for everyone who served Him—Baptists and the Hindus, Seventh Day Adventists, Muslims and Jews, as well as Catholics.

St. Augustine also states that, in a sense, shame is related to disobedience. Positively, this would mean that when there is perfect obedience to God, there is no shame. This confirms somewhat the spiritual truth that Catholic educators have observed, namely, that as obedience to the law of Christ increases, concupiscence or the passions actually diminish.

JESUS & THE WEATHER I don't think Jesus Who is Our Lord would have liked the weather in Limerick because it's always raining and the Shannon keeps the whole city damp. My father says the Shannon is a killer river because it killed my two brothers. When you look at pictures of Jesus He's always wandering around ancient Israel in a sheet. It never rains there and you never hear of anyone coughing or getting consumption or anything like that and no one has a job there because all they do is stand around and eat manna and shake their fists and go to crucifixions. Anytime Jesus got hungry all He had to do was go up the road to a fig tree or an orange tree and have His fill. If He wanted a pint He could wave His hand over a big glass and there was the pint. Or He could visit Mary Magdalene and her sister, Martha, and they'd give Him His dinner no questions asked and He'd get his feet washed and dried with Mary Magdalene's hair while Martha washed the dishes, which I don't think is fair. Why should she have to wash the dishes while her sister sits out there chatting away with Our Lord? It's a good thing Jesus decided to be born Jewish in that warm place because if he was born in Limerick he'd catch the consumption and be dead in a month and there wouldn't be any Catholic Church and there wouldn't be any Communion or Confirmation and we wouldn't have to learn the catechism and write compositions about Him. The End.

In 1633,” Ainslie explained, “Galileo was condemned for heresy and held under house arrest for the last eight years of his life—all because he showed that the earth revolves around the sun. That, of course, was contrary to Catholic doctrine, which said that the earth was the center of the universe and didn’t move. Only in 1992, after what the Vatican called ‘thirteen years of study,’ did Pope John Paul II admit the Church was wrong—something science had confirmed centuries before.

You can become a saint! The good news is that God wants us all to go to Heaven! There is no greater proof than the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. We, the baptized, have been entrusted with all the grace necessary to become a saint through the Holy Eucharist. Bus as if that was not enough, He gives us the ability to be Jesus' hands and feet on the Earth through the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the example of how to live those out through the lives of the saints, and the tremendous graces available through devotions approved by the Magisterium of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Don't miss the opportunity!

Dialogue with Catholics and other nonevangelical Christians offered some correction to the Church Growth movement's fixation on cultural accommodation and baptism rates. However - save for those few who converted - evangelicals attracted to other Christian traditions have made those traditions their own. They assemble do-it-yourself liturgies from a hodgepodge of monastic prayers and mystics' visions. They lionize medieval dissenters - Celtic monks, or renegade Franciscans - but don't understand their broader Catholic context. Without quite realizing what they have done, evangelicals often use these ancient teachings and practices to confirm, rather than challenge, their own assumptions. History becomes a sidekick to one's twenty-first-century journey with Jesus.

Rosemary Klein, Winchester, England: Always keep your knees together, ladies; they are best friends. Sister Rosemary Carroll, R.I.P. Katy Kidd Wright, a friend who described herself as a “non-RC heathen raising RC kids going to Catholic schools” confirmed that ashes on foreheads was still in vogue. “The modern curriculum even has a robotics lesson in Grade 2 where my eldest learned to mechanize Mary and Joseph's walk to Bethlehem.” In my school days, we wrote JMJ on the top of scribbler pages for a Holy Family Jesus, Mary, and Joseph blessing. Other times, we wrote BVM for the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was an alphabet acronym heaven. Whenever Dad felt no one was listening to him, he spoke to the Blessed Virgin Mary statue on the living room mantle. They talked a lot.

Domestic society being confirmed, therefore, by this bond of love, there should flourish in it that "order of love," as St. Augustine calls it. This order includes both the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children, the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the Apostle commends in these words: "Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church." This subjection, however, does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; nor does it bid her obey her husband's every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife; nor, in fine, does it imply that the wife should be put on a level with those persons who in law are called minors, to whom it is not customary to allow free exercise of their rights on account of their lack of mature judgment, or of their ignorance of human affairs. But it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family; it forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin. For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love. Again, this subjection of wife to husband in its degree and manner may vary according to the different conditions of persons, place and time. In fact, if the husband neglect his duty, it falls to the wife to take his place in directing the family. But the structure of the family and its fundamental law, established and confirmed by God, must always and everywhere be maintained intact.

William Palmer, a distinguished member of the Anglican Church and of the University of Oxford, wished to join the Orthodox Church. He went to Russia and Turkey to study the contemporary situation in the Christian East and to find out on what conditions he would be admitted to the communion of the Eastern Orthodox. At St. Petersburg and at Moscow he was told that he had only to abjure the errors of Protestantism before a priest, who would thereupon administer to him the sacrament of Holy Chrism or Confirmation. But at Constantinople he found that he must be baptized afresh. As he knew himself to be a Christian and saw no reason to suspect the validity of his baptism (which incidentally was admitted without question by the Orthodox Russian Church), he considered that a second baptism would be a sacrilege. On the other hand, he could not bring himself to accept Orthodoxy according to the local rules of the Russian Church, since he would then become Orthodox only in Russia while remaining a heathen in the eyes of the Greeks; and he had no wish to join a national Church but to join the universal Orthodox Church. No one could solve his dilemma, and so he became a Roman Catholic.

In exchange for some wide-ranging modifications demanded by the socialist government to the church’s 1929 concordat, Italy agreed to underwrite the remainder of the $406 million settlement.53 The changes to the concordat would have once been unthinkable. The church dropped its insistence that Roman Catholicism be the state religion. Moving forward, the state had to confirm church-annulled marriages. Parents were given the right to opt their children out of formerly mandatory religious education classes. And Rome was no longer considered a “sacred city,” a classification that had allowed the Vatican to keep out strip clubs and the porn industry. Italy even managed to get the church to relinquish control of the Jewish catacombs. “The new concordat is another example of the diminishing hold of the Roman Catholic church in civil life in Italy,” noted The New York Times.54 In return, Italy instituted an“eight-per-thousand” tax, in which 0.8 percent of the income tax paid by ordinary Italians was distributed to one of twelve religious organizations recognized by the state. During its early years, nearly 90 percent of the tax went to the Catholic Church (by 2010, the church received less than 50 percent as the tax was more equitably distributed). Not only did the tax relieve Italy of its responsibility for the $135 million annual subsidy it paid for the country’s 35,000 priests, it meant the church had a steady and reliable source of much needed income.55

by the grace of God, I was able to follow in their footsteps on April 6, 1996, when, at the great vigil of Easter, I was confirmed as a Catholic. I chose St. Augustine of Hippo as my patron saint. And I mean literally that I made my decision by God’s grace alone. No intellectual process, no course of reading, can ever, in and of itself, bring a man to faith—either in Christ or in His kingdom, the Church. Faith is a miracle. And what the four witnesses had offered to me was the story of another miracle—another incarnation. I knew, and already believed with all my heart, that the Son of God had become Man at Bethlehem for my salvation; “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). But now I could see that the early Fathers believed more: They believed that His Bride had become flesh too. The

At that time the Roman Catholic Church routinely refused the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confirmation to intellectually disabled children, especially those with Down syndrome.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedictus XVI) confirmed on November 26, 1983 again that: “The principles of Freemasonry remain irreconcilable with the principles of the Catholic Church.” In an article of the Osservatore Romano of February 1985 it is explained clearly that “a Catholic can’t experience his relation to God in a dual manner by dividing it into a humanistic supra-confessional religion on the one

Pope Francis is seen by prophecy scholars as matching the description, and my former volume, Petrus Romanus, details how he satisfies a nine-hundred-year-old prophecy pointing toward the False Prophet or second beast in the biblical Apocalypse (Revelation 13:11). Pope Francis is confirming this identity by asserting universal salvation: “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!”[402] Of course, the idea that atheists are redeemed is contrary to the teaching of Jesus (Matthew 7:13–14) and the New Testament in general (Galatians 2:16; Hebrews 11:6). Whether or not Pope Francis is the False Prophet remains to be seen, but it is indisputable that he is a false prophet. We’ve seen plenty of evidence for the transition—the paranormal paradigm shift—but who

The Orthodox Church of Christ is the Body of Christ, a spiritual organism whose Head is Christ. It has a single spirit, a single common faith, a single and common catholic consciousness, guided by the Holy Spirit; and its reasonings are based on the concrete, definite foundations of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Apostolic Tradition. This catholic consciousness is always with the Church, but, in a more definite fashion, this consciousness is expressed in the Ecumenical Councils of the Church. From profound Christian antiquity, local councils of separate Orthodox Churches gathered twice a year, in accordance with the 37th Canon of the Holy Apostles.18 Likewise, often in the history of the Church there were councils of regional bishops representing a wider area than individual Churches and, finally, councils of bishops of the whole Orthodox Church of both East and West. Such Ecumenical Councils the Church recognizes as seven in number. The Ecumenical Councils formulated precisely and confirmed a number of the fundamental truths of the Orthodox Christian Faith, defending the ancient teaching of the Church against the distortions of heretics. The Ecumenical Councils likewise formulated numerous laws and rules governing public and private Christian church life, which are called the Church canons, and required the universal and uniform observance of them. Finally, the Ecumenical Councils confirmed the dogmatic decrees of a number of local councils, and also the dogmatic statements composed by certain Fathers of the Church — for example, the confession of faith of St. Gregory the Wonderworker, Bishop of Neo-Caesarea,19 the canons of St. Basil the Great,20 and so forth.

In the Catholic Church the Communion of Saints is a lot like those fellow trail hikers in the Grand Canyon. The saints are our intercessors, our coaches, our fans along the path to the finish line. They go before us, and they walk beside us. They want to help you and pray for you from their seats of honor in heaven. Let them! Learn about them! Write about them! While compiling this book, I learned a great deal about St. Francis de Sales—how his character was so gentle and how he won many souls by practicing his own axiom, “A spoonful of honey attracts more flies than a barrelful of vinegar.”32 He is also said to have coined the term “Grow (bloom) where you are planted”—a personal favorite of mine and the meaning of which I have journaled about quite often, unaware that it was a quote generated by a saint! Reading about the saints or reading the writings of the saints can give you much fodder for your journal. You can even pick a Prayer Partner Saint—your baptism or confirmation saint, perhaps? What questions can you ask him or her? How can this saint help you along your trail? TTBH #4: LISTEN UP!

At that time the Roman Catholic Church routinely refused the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confirmation to intellectually disabled children, especially those with Down syndrome. Even today some local churches still refuse the sacrament to those with intellectual impairments, in spite of a directive from the church during the latter part of the twentieth century that clergy should offer the sacraments to them.

Hitler’s religious beliefs have been the focus of some debate. His father, though nominally Catholic, was anticlerical and skeptical of religion; his mother, with whom he was particularly close, was a practicing, devout Catholic. Hitler was confirmed in the Catholic Church in May 1904. He regularly attended services throughout his childhood and even sang in the choir at the Benedictine

As Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman has pointed out, “Son and Mother went together; and the experience of three centuries has confirmed their testimony, for Catholics who have honoured the Mother, still worship the Son, while Protestants, who now have ceased to confess the Son, began then by scoffing at the Mother.”11 Newman experienced this firsthand in post-Reformation England, but it is also clear that mainline Protestantism has lost much of its faith—particularly as it capitulates further with secular and godless cultural trends. What Newman and others have recognized is that devotion to Mary doesn’t mean passivity; rather, her “spiritual motherhood promotes a childlike docility and expectation with regard to her ability and authority to form us into other Christs.”12 Many of the saints have testified to the transformation that has taken place in their lives because of their devotion to her.

There was definitely a cat and another animal, probably a rabbit, in the shed. Her suspicions were confirmed soon enough. Madeleine lit a candle, its light illuminating a wooden hutch where an enormous rabbit was nibbling at some freshly picked clover. In her lap, the little grey cat was all grown up; it was the same cat Madeleine had been holding on the balcony the day when one look from her teal-colored eyes had been enough to floor poor Solange. Holy pictures were pinned over the hutch: Saint Anne, the Miraculous Virgin of the Smile (who cured ten-year-old Thérèse), Saint Veronica holding her veil, and Saint Joan of Arc had all been carefully pinned in a row, looking down tenderly over the big orange rabbit who went on munching his clover. Pinned to the frame of the hutch was a piece of wax paper with the animal's name- Lazarus- written on it. "His name's Lazarus," Madeleine whispered as she grabbed him by the ears. Solange winced in pain. "You have to pick them up by the ears or else you hurt them. I'll set him down on your lap." Solange had never touched a living rabbit before. She stroked Lazarus, who right then seemed to her to be the gentlest, most charming thing to ever have walked this earth.

the Rite of Election, where the Church formally recognizes a person’s desire to become Catholic. The Sacraments of Initiation: For most people, the RCIA process reaches its climax at the Easter Vigil, where non-Christian catechumens receive baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist. Catechumens from other Christian denominations with valid baptisms receive confirmation and the Eucharist. It is a joyous occasion that celebrates how God has brought his children into full communion with Christ’s “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.

Ironically, I would lose my faith by taking a class in theology in a Catholic college that was also a required academic course. So, I started reading theologians and scholars of Bible history. I found, to my amazement, confirmation of my suspicions that the entire Bible was nothing more than mythology, no less fake than the Greek and Roman gods.

Finally, what the history of this period proves is that, during a time of general apostacy, Christians who remain faithful to their traditional faith may have to worship outside the official churches, the churches of priests in communion with their lawfully appointed diocesan bishop, in order not to compromise that traditional Faith; and that such Christians may have to look for truly Catholic teaching, leadership, and inspiration not to their diocesan bishop, not to the bishops of their country as a body, not to the bishops of the world, not even to the Roman Pontiff, but to one heroic confessor when the other bishops and the Roman Pontiff might have repudiated or even excommunicated. And how would they recognize that this solitary confessor was right and the Roman Pontiff and body of the episcopate (not teaching infallibly) were wrong? The answer is that they would recognize in the teaching of the confessor what the faithful of the fourth century recognized in the teaching of Athanasius: the one true Faith into which they had been baptized, in which they had been catechized, and which their Confirmation gave them the obligation of upholding. In no sense whatsoever can such fidelity to tradition be compared to the Protestant practice of private judgment. The fourth century Catholic traditionalists upheld Athanasius in his defense of the Faith that had been handed down, the Protestant uses his private judgment to justify a breach with the traditional Faith.

It was truly absurd to maintain that the laws of previous Pontiffs become obsolete, if they are not confirmed expressly by one's successors.

Archbishop Lefebvre's detractors frequently accuse him of rejecting or defying a General Council of the Church. Such a claim requires a great deal of clarification before it can be proved true or false. Is it claimed, for example, that Mgr. Lefebvre has denied that Vatican II really was a general council; that its documents were not approved by a majority of the Council Fathers and confirmed and promulgated by the Pope? What Archbishop Lefebvre has claimed in fact is that the reforms imposed in the name of the Council constitute an inexcusable breach with Tradition and are destroying the Church. He insists further that the seeds of this process of self-destruction can be found within the Council itself. If what he claims is true, then he is right to reject the post-conciliar reforms and to urge the Faithful to do so; indeed, it would be his duty in conscience to take this step even if it meant, as it has done, that he should decline to accept the clearly expressed wishes of the Pope.

She was a good cradle Catholic who had been confirmed and received a certain amount of instruction, but she had never been forced to argue her case out with a confirmed and determined pagan. Atheists were often easier to deal with since for most of them the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Inquisition and the Knights Templar Barnes, Alexander. The Man who Stole Stonehenge (Kindle Locations 970-972). Unknown. Kindle Edition.

But Ivan IV could stand his ground in disputation with a Jesuit[31] just as he did against Protestants, despite his fondness of the Protestant English; and after the Polish intervention during the Time of Troubles chances of winning Russia over became even slimmer. In fact the triumph of Brest was to mark the limit of Catholic penetration of Eastern Europe; and this limit constituted a cultural as well as a religious frontier. It was not quite an impervious Iron Curtain. Nevertheless it impeded acceptance of humanism, Latin culture and Western ideas, confirming an ideological divide that would be recalled by, and contribute to, the Cold War of the twentieth century.

Luther had outfoxed his enemies; he had made the speech he was to have been prevented from making, and by his account at least von der Ecken was furious and shouted at him. He had not answered the question. The imperial officer attacked with a litany of names, heresies already condemned in the past that Luther was now resurrecting as if they were new discoveries. Heretics had always claimed the support of scripture against the church, he said. The worst heresies were those in which a little error was mixed with a lot of true doctrine-perhaps a slap against those in the room like Glapion who had said that Luther's books contained much good. Luther was a man who could stumble and err, and scripture could not be interpreted by one fallible man. We cannot draw things into doubt and dispute that the Catholic Church has judged already, things that have passed into usage, rite, and observance, things that our fathers held onto with firm faith, for which they suffered pain and torture, for which even thousands suffered death rather than reject one of them! And now you want to seduce us from the way to which our fathers were true! And what would the Jews and Turks and Saracens and the other enemies of our faith say when they heard about it? Why, they would burst into scornful laughter! Here are we Christians beginning to argue whether we have believed correctly until now! Do not deceive yourself, Martin. You are not the only one who knows the scripture, not the only one who has struggled to convey the true meaning of holy scripture-not after so many holy doctors have worked day and night to explain holy writ! Do not set your judgment over that of so many famous men. Do not imagine you know more than all of them. Do not throw the most sacred orthodox faith into doubt, the faith that Christ the most perfect lawgiver ordained, the faith that the apostles spread over the world, the faith confirmed by miracles, the faith that martyrs strengthened with their red blood ... You wait in vain, Martin, for a disputation over things that you are obligated to believe with certain and professing Von der Ecken's assumption was one of the great medieval myths, a myth taken for granted for so long that only when it was sternly questioned did those who accepted it see how fragile it was. The myth was that history was a positive and progressive force, shaped by divinity, and that revelation became more certain and more detailed with the passage of time. It seems clear from this speech that von der Ecken recognized the fragility of the assumptions that give faith plausibility and how Luther's attack threatened to bring them all down. In a room now filling with darkness, the voice of the imperial orator must have been a cry against a greater darkness that von der Ecken saw creeping over the world. If Luther was right, was anything certain? How could one man set himself against history?

When the facts of slave labour and especially the slave trade from Africa began to filter through to the Vatican chambers in Rome, popes began to express their concern. This was good. The popes began to criticise the exploitation of the native peoples. But unfortunately, they did not examine the principle of slavery itself. Thus Pope Paul III, in 1537, condemned the indiscriminate enslavement of Indians in South America. But when challenged, he confirmed ten years later that both clergy and laity had the right to own slaves. A century later, in 1639, Pope Urban VIII criticised unjust practices against the natives, but did not deny the four 'just titles' for owning slaves. Pope Benedict XIV condemned the wholesale enslavement of natives in Brazil — without denouncing slavery as such, nor the importation of slaves from Africa.

This was to continue until 1866 when, as we have seen, the Holy Office under Pius IX still declared that slavery as such was not against human or divine law. What was wrong with these Church leaders? Were they heartless creatures who were not moved by the plight of helpless slaves in so many countries? The answer is that they were caught by their misguided awe for this solid 'tradition', which we know to be a cuckoo chick, but which they saw confirmed in the writings of the Fathers, the decrees of Church councils, the sanction of previous popes. They did not stop to think, 'What is the basis for all this?

Why does the bishop give those confirmed a slight blow on the cheek? To remind them that like Christ and the Apostles, they must courageously bear all adversities and persecutions for the holy faith, and thus obtain that true peace which the bishop wishes them.

Our desire would be to confirm and increase in you love for the Church, the Holy Church of Christ which is the mystical Body of Christ, the extension of the mystery of the incarnation in humanity and in time.

The Christian canon was complete by the end of the 1st century, but many writings were left out because they had to be confirmed. In the West, the finalization of the canon was achieved between 380 and 390; it was not finalized in the East until later.

In the meantime, my own understanding of Julian has grown and changed as I became a priest of the Orthodox Church. Through this experience my original impression, that Julian reproduces insights of the great theologians of the Eastern Church, has been continually deepened and confirmed. (In this study I have used the word, “Church,” to denote Julian’s own Roman Catholic tradition, as she would have done; and not in the Orthodox sense, which is limited to Orthodoxy.)

What Revelation makes known to us is confirmed by our own experience. For when man looks into his own heart he finds that he is drawn toward what is wrong and sunk in many evils which cannot come from his good creator.

limited to the seven sacraments of baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, penance, the anointing of the sick, holy orders, and matrimony. But they are seven central means for the common worship of God, privileged means that bring Catholics together in a community of mutual support and enable them to experience the risen Christ as effectively present in their lives. The sacraments are vivid, perceptible signs (that can be seen, heard, tasted, touched, and smelled); they create ritual dramas that take believers into a sacred time and place. They help participants to absorb the truths and values of Christian faith or allow such truths and values to revivify. They are a school of faith, a matrix for maturing faith. The sacraments confer and strengthen the new life of grace in the particular form that each sacrament symbolizes.

In the sacrament of Confirmation, the Holy Spirit comes with new strength and power to confirm the baptism often received as an infant. One’s baptism is sealed, and the one confirmed takes his or her place as a witness to the risen Lord in the world. Sometimes this is explained as “becoming an adult Catholic.”Adults, of course, have responsibilities to others; and the confirmed Catholic has a responsibility to worship God in spirit and in truth and to witness to Christ, to evangelize and transform the world.

The current spirit of our country inclines us to be troubled. It’s a sensible temptation. How can any one person or small group of people make a difference? How can we change and renew things so that our children grow up in a better world? We come back to a question suggested at the start of this book: How can we live in joy, and serve the common good as leaven, in a culture that no longer shares what we believe? The answer to that question springs from a simple historical fact: On a quiet Sunday morning two thousand years ago, God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. This small moment, unseen by any human eye, turned the world upside down and changed history forever. It confirmed Jesus’ victory over death and evil. It liberated those living and dead who lay in bondage to their sins. An anonymous ancient homily for Holy Saturday, speaking in the voice of Jesus Christ, reminds us of the full import of his resurrection: I am your God, who for your sake [has] become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants, I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. Jesus rose from the dead so that we could be joined to him and his victory. Believers know that Jesus was not only victorious then, in Jerusalem. He’ll also come in royal glory at the end of time, when he will judge the living and the dead. At Christ’s second coming, his kingdom will fully arrive. His reign will be complete. The time in which we find ourselves is an interim one. We may struggle as we seek to follow Jesus, but we also remember the great victories of our King: the victory in the past and the victory certain to come. And those victories give us hope. Hope

Translators with catholic background changed the meaning of Colossians 2:17 by adding the word “is” that we see in italics. Without the ”is” it could read…  Don’t let any man judge how you keep those holy days which are a shadow of things to come. The body of Christ [the local church] can decide how they will observe them. A shadow of things to come implies they are prophetic of events that could happen on those times. This is confirmed by Christ as He ended the parable of 10 virgins. He told His disciples they didn’t understand. That’s a better meaning than “know” that people understand as nobody will know, in spite of God saying He won’t do anything without revealing it in Amos 3:7. Christ said to watch. The Greek word is gregoreo, it means to be awake. Passover was the only time it was commanded

It is ignoble to suggest that we go with the flow; the suggestion is repulsive to human honor alone. It is a sign of our decadent times that anyone would dare make such a suggestion to Christians confirmed with holy chrism! Imagine a king disposed from his throne, the last, best hope of his conquered fatherland, who was suddenly to declare that he considered himself justly disposed and that he only aspired to enjoy his personal possessions, according to the laws governing all citizens, beneath the protection of the very men who are plundering his subjects; can you see the infinite disgrace of such a wretched king? But that would be nothing in comparison with what is proposed to us.

To be truly man means to be fully oneself. The confirmation is the confirmation of man in his own, unique "personality". It is, to use again the same image, his ordination to be himself, to become what God wants him to be, what he has loved in me from all eternity. It is the gift of vocation. If the Church is truly the "newness of life" - the world and nature as restored in Christ - it is not, or rather ought not be, a purely religious institution in which to be "pious,” to be a member in "good standing,” means leaving one's own personality at the entrance - in the "check room” - and replacing it with a worn-out, impersonal, neutral "good Christian" type personality. Piety in fact may be a very dangerous thing a real opposition to the Holy Spirit who is the Giver of Life - of joy, movement, and creativity - and not of the "good conscience" which looks at everything with suspicion, fear, and moral indignation. Confirmation is the opening of man to the wholeness of divine creation, to the true catholicity of life. This is the "wind,” the ruah of God entering our life, embracing it with fire and love, making us available for divine action, filling everything with joy and hope...