Well one of the great Joys
I have as a bishop is presiding at confirmations, and so I find myself right now as I record these words in the middle of
confirmation season, now one of the drawbacks though is I have so man.
I have about 40 in a very concentrated period.
That I get sick of my own homily.
So I'm always kind of changing and adjusting and finding new angles,
and there are actually a lot of interesting angles I think
on the sacrament of confirmation.
I want to share with you the most recent
homily I've been using for these young people.
I talk about the five promises, so.
Just before the calling of the Holy Spirit and the anointing of the candidates we have the reaffirmation of their baptismal promises.
I tell the young people, you know when you were babies most of you,
your parents and your godparents made these promises for you.
But now you're going to stand up on your own two feet, and, in your own voice
you're going to make these promises, and
I mentioned them how they're doing it in the midst of the church so literally all these people watching and listening
That's very important.
They're publicly declaring who they are before the church and before God
So, I'll just say one simple thing about each of these promises. That's what I'm sharing with these young people.
The first promise they make is negative in form, but
that's okay I tell them,
because if you if you set your face
You're automatically setting your back right?
If you tell the world, here's what I'm for, ipso facto
you're telling them what you're against,
So the first thing is they, you know.
Do you promise to renounce Satan and all his empty works, and all his works and empty promises?
Well, I say to them. What are the empty promises that you're turning your back on?
They're everywhere in the culture.
You hear them in practically every movie you watch, practically every song you listen to. They're on the lips of every pop star.
Namely you can be happy if you fill up your life with enough power and wealth and pleasure and honor, the big four.
And again, start listening.
Once you know those big four, start listening.
You hear them every
day
If you just get enough of this you'll be happy. I tell the young people and I say older folks here know this.
You have to maybe come to learn it.
Wealth makes you wealthy. That's true.
But it does not make you happy
Power makes Powerful.
It does not make you happy. Honor makes you honored, but it does not make you happy
and I tell them
because every church you go into there's some big depiction of the
Crucifix and
I say take a look up there
We don't put Bill Gates at the center of our attention in our churches.
We don't put Donald Trump at the center of our attention. We don't put, you know, Beyonce or
some pop star.
We don't say wealth, power, honor
make you happy. We put this weird image of a crucified
Jesus who has eschewed wealth,pleasure, power, and hono. So I said that's a symbol of this first negative
promise that you make. Okay. That's what you're against.
What are you for? Well, now the remaining promises.
I believe in God the Father Almighty creator of Heaven and Earth
and I tell them what this means is not simply the intellectual conviction that there's a God and that's
countercultural enough today. God knows with the number of you know atheist and so on, but I said it means
that you know your life is not about you.
That a little baby, you know his life is all about him.
It's meeting his immediate needs, and that's okay.
But then as we mature, I tell these young people,
what happens is you're introduced to wider and wider horizons, right?
Your obligation to your family and to your
community and to your society and to your country and then ultimately if we're biblical people
our obligation to God.
That you do not find your joy in the measure that you realize your projects and plans
but rather that you surrender to God's purposes and that you become an ingredient in God's purpose.
Then you find your joy, so I said that's what you're saying when you get up and say I believe in God.
Next that you believe in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord.
And here I say to them, look just just focus on that one word Lord Lord.
Everyone's got a lord. I tell them, and they might pretend that oh no, I'm just you know,
self-motivated.
No, everyone is beholden to somebody or something.
It might be your country, your culture, it might be
some ideal, it might be your company, it might be money, it might be fame
but there's some lord of everyone's life,
and even though the young people don't get this, I quote
my hero, the Nobel laureate Bob Dylan that you know you've got to serve somebody.
It might be the devil, might be the lord, but you got to serve somebody.
Everyone's serving some lord, right?
Who's your Lord?
You're going to stand up and say that Jesus is my lord.
Then I remind them again glancing up at the cross.
What does it mean to say
that Jesus is your lord?
It means no one else is lord, and that
means it's a permanently subversive and revolutionary claim.
And then I remind them the first Christians who made that claim almost without exception ended up in prison and put to death
So, please God, they'l never come to that point, but I said, still you're making just as radical,
just as revolutionary a claim.
Next they say,
I believe in the holy spirit.
So I say to them, look who's the holy spirit?
And they're all wearing red, you know.
Usually I'm in a red vestnebtm unless it's on a Sunday.
So, we're wearing the color of fire, the color of the holy spirit.
The spirit, I tell them, is the love that connects the father and the son, so the father and son
from all eternity look at each other and they breathe forth their mutual love, and that is the Spiritus Sanctus, the holy breath, right?
The love that God is.
You're against wealth, pleasure, honor and power as the source of your happiness. What will make you happy,
I tell them, the only thing that is
correspondent to the infinity of your desire is the infinity of the divine love.
The only thing that's inexhaustible
is the divine love, and so what you're saying when you say, I believe in the holy spirit is,
my life is not going to be an adventure in increasing my wealth and honor and power.
My life will be an adventure in increasing my capacity for love right?
And that's all that finally matters, all that will finally make you happy, I tell them.
Then finally I
believe in the Holy Catholic church.
Now I say look it might seem obvious here you are you're all in church, and you're all getting confirmed as Catholics.
But what does it mean to believe in the church?
I remind them the church is not a club or a
society, a voluntary organization which you can leave if you want to.
You join the Abraham Lincoln Society or the Bob Dylan club and
great, until they annoy you or do something you don't like then you leave.
It's a voluntary organization, but the church, and I then remind them of Paul,
is not an organization, but an organism.
It's a living body, and they're the cells and molecules and organs in it.
They're the means by which Jesus continues to do his work.
So you might think you can just opt out,
but in fact, you're permanently members of this
mystical body and
if you opt out
the work of Jesus won't get done in the world.
You know so I want them to see the enormous obligation they have
in saying I believe in the Catholic church.
Just a last thought that I share with them that
they're going to come forward and I'm going to
mark them right with the Chrism oil, mark them with the cross of Jesus.
And I remind them that Confirmation is a
character sacrament, and like Baptism and holy orders, it can't be given more than once because it
forms you.
It marks you in a permanent way, right.
And I said the word character is from a Greek term that means, brand like psst.
When someone brands the the cattle, and it claims the animal, it's belongs to me.
I said, I'm going to claim you with the cross of Jesus. I'm going to brand you..
You belong to Jesus now, you know, and that's what we're confirming you in, is this new identity
as someone who's made these public promises
against certain things and for other things, and now branded and confirmed
you're ready to go forth.
I hope they take it in as
not an overwhelming message, but as a kind of embracing,
and I hope finally
a deeply encouraging message.