Tag Archives: Confirmation

Confirmation Session 5: Avoid offending God and when we have offended God, apologize

There’s stuff that we do – being dishonest, unfaithful, selfish… stealing – that offends and hurts God.

Stuff that hurts God is called sin.

When we offend God it’s like offending any other person.

Imagine loving the person who has offended or hurt you…

We don’t usually do that. We’re much more likely to avoid that person, to back away.

Can you imagine God backing away in much the same way?

So let’s try to imagine that instead of backing away you walk toward the person and hug them, forgive them. Do you think that’s difficult to do?

This is how it is for God too but for God it’s on a much bigger scale.

Imagine hugging human offence on a global scale… imagine the cost!

5.1 Jesus taught us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to lend without any hope of return, and lots more difficult stuff too.

He was really just saying: Be like God.

Check it out: Luke 6:27-38 but read it as a description of God.

If we lived like this, as Jesus taught us, as God-like, it’d take every bit of us, we might say it’d crucify us!

This is how God loves us and we see the cost of it in Jesus Christ crucified.

Imagine always seeking to love the person hurting you, offending you, always seeking to love your enemy and enemies, always turning the other cheek, always lending* without any hope of return, imagine the cost!

For God it’s crucifixion and lasts until the end of time or for as long as God loves us, as long as God is merciful.

When we offend God we’re causing this suffering.

When we apologize, tell God we’re sorry… we’re easing this suffering.

Simple as that.

So, when you offend God, apologize, and commit to live like him.

5.2 But also – and this is very important – if we’re dishonest, unfaithful, selfish, then God can’t give his gifts to us because God’s gifts are really little bits of Heaven and if God gives Heaven (or even a tiny piece of Heaven) to a dishonest or unfaithful or selfish person he’s actually creating hell, turning Heaven into hell.

It’s a bit like a business owner promoting a dishonest employee… disaster, the business will be lucky to survive.

So, the bottom line here is if you’re offending God you just can’t receive Heaven or God’s gifts 🎁

No, you must change your ways first.

Repent!

*God lends life without any hope of return, always, until the end of time.

Confirmation Session 4: Mass

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Mass is everything.

On earth there is nothing greater than Mass… at least in God’s eyes!

Padre Pio once said that it’d be easier for the earth to exist without the sun than for the earth to exist without Mass!

Mass is Heaven’s greatest gift 🎁

Mass is Jesus and all that he has done for us.

Imagine trying to hug the person who has hurt you. It’s so hard… sometimes impossible.

Well that’s what it’s like for God. When God loves us he’s also loving us as people who’ve offended him and that’s so hard to do.

When we look at Jesus on the Cross we’re looking at how hard it is for God to love us as people who’ve offended him. We can see it in a way that makes it more than just words.

Mass is this love ❤️ offered to us personally. It’s personal. It’s Jesus himself.

God packages everything he’s got – love – and gifts it to us in the person of Jesus who unites himself completely with us in Communion. God actually comes from Heaven and enters inside us in Jesus when we receive Communion.

If this is true… that Mass is God’s love for us, nothing less than Jesus himself leaving Heaven and entering inside us, then we should prepare for Mass very carefully.

If Mass is Jesus… and in Jesus we see how hard it is for God to love us as people who’ve offended him, then we should be really careful to not offend him even more in Mass and especially in receiving Communion.

Try to understand Communion from God’s side…

He’s loved us as people who’ve offended him to the point where it’s crucified him, to the point of giving his life, and it’s all packaged up and gifted to us in Mass and Communion.

It follows that Mass and Communion matter a great deal. I can’t stress this enough. It may not matter to us but it matters in Heaven.

The bottom line here is; when we celebrate Mass and especially when we receive Communion, depending on the state of our souls – if we’re pleasing or displeasing to God – we may be consoling him or we may be adding to his suffering.

This is the reason the church says we should always apologize to God for our offences before receiving Communion.

In fact, the church (who got this in the first place from men and women who were very close to God) says we should tell God we’re sorry in Confession before receiving Communion.

Equally though, given that it costs God so much to embrace us, our little sufferings freely offered to him in Mass serve to take away a little bit of his suffering and give him great comfort. In these moments we make God feel like his work in Jesus is worth it! In fact, God delights in us when we freely accept and offer him our little sufferings.

So, I’ve tried to explain how Mass is experienced in Heaven… how God experiences Mass.

If this is God’s understanding of Mass then how does God feel when we don’t go to Mass?

Are our usual excuses for not going to Mass received in Heaven as little more than further insult?

What’s it like for God when we go to Mass but our minds and hearts are elsewhere? Well… what’s it like when you’re talking to someone and they’re not paying any attention to you? That’s how it is for God.

In truth God is grieved by our unbelief and indifference toward Mass.

If all that I’m saying is true then we’re probably offending God on a scale we haven’t even begun to understand.

Still, God will seek to love us, always. It just costs him much more!

Confirmation Session 3.2: Prayer 🙏 and the Holy Spirit

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Caution ⚠️ from here on I may be describing spiritual experience that goes over lots of heads!

Please don’t let this put you off… instead treat it as a map of the path to intimacy with God.

The Spirit has only one purpose – to bring you with her… to bring you back into the Holy Trinity (God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit = Trinity)

In fact, the Spirit can’t do anything else but return to the Father and the Son. She’s come to you, started the process of making you hers, but she will want to go back to the Father and to the Son, back home so to speak, it’s where she belongs, and since you now merit her presence she’ll bring you with Her – like being collected by a parent to bring you home!

When this happens it feels like you’re still on earth but with your heart ❤️ and more besides already in Heaven.

For the spiritually advanced this half on earth half in Heaven heart and mind space, this soul space, is quite painful. It’s a longing that the soul realizes can’t be truly fulfilled in this life.

Overall this is how we become God’s possession.

Bear in mind though that at any point along the way you can drive the Spirit away from you (traditionally known as the effect of mortal sin)

Once we’ve made it possible for the Holy Spirit to breach our personal space and provided we remain faithful to the four essentials she begins to melt us and mould us and a new person is formed – St. Paul’s new man or woman – and this new man or woman will always manifest clearly identifiable qualities, characteristics, traits… which are in fact the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit fully developed.

But God won’t leave it there. No, there’ll be other gifts bestowed which will be given primarily to help the recipient bring others to Jesus.

To give some idea of the breath of gifts that God might bestow it is necessary to look to the lives of the saints.

So, as an essential part of preparation for Confirmation I recommend reading at least one of the many written accounts of the life of Padre Pio.

You don’t have to do this now, or pre Confirmation, but at some point in the coming months.

Confirmation Session 3.1: How to pray

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Create the space and the time.

In prayer speak to God as you would to another person, as you would to a friend using your own words. What do you speak about when you meet your friends? When you’re on a sleep-over? When you meet a friend for coffee or lunch? That’s the stuff of prayer, talk to God as you would to a friend.

Don’t be afraid to speak audibly (out loud) if it helps.

Tell him all that’s going on in your life… in your own words. Adults might like to tell him all the gossip… then watch your attitude change!

It may help if you’ve got something to focus on, an image or a statue, or from wherever you are situated, to turn toward the tabernacle in your local church and empty out your heart and mind… over time this will lead to a profound silence in which the soul and God communicate without and beyond words.

When using images remember there’s an order, Jesus first, Mary second; an order that Mary herself respects.

For this reason I recommend turning toward the tabernacle in your local church although this orientation doesn’t exclude the use of a statue of Mary in your prayer space, it just means that if you’re asking Mary for something at least you can look away from her toward her Son because this is the totality of all that she can do in response to you asking her in the first place.

You see anything Mary obtains for us, she obtains by praying to her Son, so as we move our gaze away from her and toward her Son we’re uniting our gaze with that of Mary, a combined look toward her Son.

In prayer it’s vital to grasp that God has shown himself in Jesus and all that God wants us to know is to be found in Jesus.

Therefore we must pay close attention to the teachings of Jesus which are found in the four books of the Gospels.

A convenient way to access the teachings of Jesus is by paying close attention to the Sunday Gospels – a good reason to go to Mass on Sundays!

Read them over and over, sit with them, through them Christ will teach you about the inner workings of Heaven, of God Himself.

If we persist in prayer God will begin to trust us with himself and his inner world, with Heaven, and even a few scraps from Heaven are worth more than everything the world has to offer!

When you’ve learned to speak with God in your own words you will find it easier to pray using the traditional formulas.

Remember, the traditional prayer 🙏 formulas were once someone’s own words based on their experience of God.

Now go make that experience your own!

Confirmation Session 3: Prayer – convincing God we’re serious

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Prayer is the use of our freedom to invite God to breach our personal space.

It’s our consent, our permission given to God. Such is God’s respect for human freedom that without this invitation… this consent… this permission… God will not enter our personal space.

So without prayer God remains outside… distant… remote… little more than a thought or a possibility!

Prayer is vital…

Without it… nothing!

Prayer must become an essential part of the rhythm of our lives… as important as our food or our nights rest.

It must become a daily activity, twice daily, three times a day, over years… and more years!

It will require its own uninterrupted time and space.

The only difference between you (or me) and Padre Pio is the amount of time spent in prayer and the quality of that prayer. The only difference between the many who are called and the few who are chosen is the amount of time spent in prayer and the quality of that prayer.

If you’re ready to develop this level of commitment…

Start by asking God to create in your very self a real hunger and thirst for Him.

Without a hunger and a thirst for God you’re not likely to even start this journey.

Sometimes, the hunger and desire for God is created out of real human need… a crisis… the feeling that there’s nowhere else to go…

Often though, we need to create it ourselves by simply asking for it over time.

At the same time ask the Holy Spirit to come and make her home in you. Invite the Holy Spirit to begin breaching your personal space and to take you into God.

In the next session we’ll look at how we might pray, how we might make these requests.

Confirmation Session 2: How we choose God

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Choosing God is really about convincing God that we’re serious about him, that we’re sincere, 100% genuine, otherwise God will leave us alone.

God will not give us his gifts 🎁

He just won’t!

So, how do we convince God that we’re serious, sincere, genuine?

We will convince God that we’re serious, sincere, and genuine by:

Praying 🙏, spending time with God. In the case of Confirmation by asking God – begging God – to give us the Holy Spirit.
By going to Mass… but it needs to be more than just going to Mass, it needs to be a very conscious uniting of ourselves with the priest to raise the very person of Jesus Christ in his one eternal redemptive sacrifice.*
By trying to avoid offending God and when we have offended God by apologizing.
By actively doing good.

To convince God we will need to do these things over a period of time, we will need to be committed, sincere, and genuine over the long haul.

We will not fool God and there are no shortcuts!

When we’ve proved ourselves to God, when God knows that he can trust us with his gifts 🎁, only then will he begin to give them to us… but not a moment before we’ve earned this trust.

When we’ve earned God’s trust (it’s called being faithful) he’ll draw us into intimacy, closeness, into his confidence.

At first, he’ll show us small stuff, little insights, he’ll open the door slightly and let us see inside Heaven, just a little bit… and if we use this small stuff properly he’ll trust us with ever greater and greater things.

In the next session we’ll look at the first of the four essentials in how we choose God: Praying 🙏.

*I’ll explain this in Session 4: Mass as prayer.

Confirmation Session 1: Using our freedom to choose God

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God’s respect for human freedom is absolute.

As far as God is concerned human freedom is non-negotiable.

So let’s be very clear – God will never force himself into our lives.

God waits to be invited in… and if he’s not invited in he’ll stay outside. Granted he’ll call to us in many ways but he will not breach our personal space.*

Now most of us were baptized as infants so how could we invite God into our lives?

We didn’t, simple as that! A baby is incapable of inviting God into it’s life so our parents and god-parents did it on our behalf.

Now that you’re leaving infancy and childhood behind, you are being given the opportunity in Confirmation to make your parents and godparents choice your own.

You are being asked to use your freedom to choose God, to confirm the choice your parents and god-parents made for you on the day of your baptism.

This is our starting point…

Are you ready and willing to choose God, to confirm the choice that your parents and god-parents made for you all those years ago?

In the next session we’ll look at how we choose God.

*Here lies the root of our boredom… apathy… disinterest… with God and with religious matters.

God Map! New Confirmation Programme

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Some may be aware that I’ve written an on-line home-based preparation programme for Confirmation. While I’ve prepared it with Confirmation in mind it’s really a map of the path to intimacy with God.

Follow the steps I’ve outlined over the long-haul and intimacy with God will follow.

A total of 8 pieces are being uploaded to the Parish Facebook page and to the Parish Website.*

Shortly after each session has been uploaded parents are informed by text message that it’s available to view and encouraged to consider it and then share it with their child(ren); each session is discussed over a two day period.

The programme is based on two fundamental spiritual truths.

Firstly, Gods absolute non-negotiable respect for human freedom: God will never breach our personal space without a trusted and proven invitation.

Secondly, we invite God into our lives through prayer – prayer is the invitation – and without prayer God remains outside our personal space. In our time this truth has been almost completely lost… and all the good works in the world will not replace prayer as the key to intimacy with God.

Since God respects human freedom – so absolutely – there are no built-in mechanisms in the programme to establish the level of engagement.

In other words the programme itself respects these two spiritual truths.

So, unless the children use their freedom to invite God into their lives – by living the 8 sessions in an age appropriate manner since they are a fundamental path to intimacy with God – God will leave them to themselves and Confirmation will produce little fruit.

Huge effort can be placed into Confirmation and all sorts of religious programmes but unless human freedom is used in this way there will be little or no spiritual return.

I believe our experience of Confirmation in recent years reflects these spiritual truths. I can’t stress this enough: God’s respect for human freedom is absolute and he will not breach our personal space without invitation, without prayer over the long haul.

The only difference between you (or me) and Padre Pio is the amount of time spent in prayer and the quality of that prayer. The only difference between the many who are called and the few who are chosen (Matt 22:14) is the amount of time spent in prayer and the quality of that prayer. The chosen wouldn’t stay chosen for long without prayer!

Of course it’s unlikely that the children will use their freedom in this way unless they receive encouragement from their parent(s) and guardian(s).

Hence the effort to create discussion and awareness of the path to intimacy with God in the home, among parent(s), guardian(s) and children preparing for Confirmation.

Finally, the children – indeed every recipient of Confirmation – can at any point in their lives renew their Confirmation by adopting and living the content of the 8 sessions and fan into flame the tiny seed of the Spirit that has remained largely dormant within them.

*The full programme is in the process of being uploaded – one session every two days – with the final session due to be uploaded on March 09th.

Encountering Christ – learning from the leper.

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‘Spirit’ Confirmation Programme 3.

The single most important question you guys need to ask and answer (your parents too) is; if Confirmation wasn’t part of school life would you be approaching your local Church to look for it?

Candidates for Confirmation participate in the first ‘Spirit’ Workshop.

Still, whether you know it or not, God is calling you guys through the very fact that Confirmation is a part of school life. He’s calling you through the ‘Spirit’ programme, through the adults who’ve given so freely of themselves, through all of us gathered here, through your teachers, and even through me!

But the greatest call is the call that comes from the direct encounter with Jesus Christ in his Word and in his body and blood offered to us in the Eucharist – although what I’m calling the ‘direct’ encounter is still being mediated through the Church!

I think the leper in today’s Gospel (Mark 1:40-45) can teach us much about Confirmation, about your Confirmation, about the Christian life in general.

The leper goes to find Jesus.

Without the effort of going out to meet Jesus – and we’re not told how much of an effort the leper had to make but it’s likely to have been significant – nothing would have changed for the leper. There’d have been no encounter with Christ and there’d have been no healing. Same old, same old, same old life!

Confirmation presumes you’re making the effort to go out and meet Jesus. If there’s no effort on your part then Confirmation – and remember what Confirmation is; the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Divine-self – will be like throwing seeds on patches of rock where there’s little soil.

Incidentally Pope John Paul II used to love to ask people: What did you do with your Confirmation? Well, what do you think?

The leper can teach us other things too about life with God – or life without God!

Generally, like the leper people won’t go looking for God until they have a need. Confirmation presumes you have a need for God. Do you have a need for God?

When the leper encounters Christ – when Jesus stretches out his hand and says: “Of course I want to! Be Cured!” – the lepers life is changed. Yes, his life is made better, enhanced, which is what the presence of Christ always does in a life, but that life is also changed, radically.

The radically changed life is something we often miss and I’m not sure whether we miss it through simple ignorance or if it’s a very deliberate attempt to make the teaching of Jesus suit us. When Jesus stretches out his hand, whether to the serious sinner or the seriously ill, a real change is effected in their lives, sinners, outsiders, the marginalized start putting right what’s wrong – often what wasn’t considered wrong before the encounter with Christ – and simultaneously they enter a deeper experience of the kingdom of God. Indeed, the change is the proof that the kingdom of God is present.

As Christ is encountered, things that didn’t seem wrong are suddenly seen to be wrong. As Christ is encountered, the catechism is encountered. The more the kingdom of God takes hold of us the more we’ll understand even the difficult teachings of the Church, things that just seemed like nonsense before our growth in Christ!

Finally, do you know where to go to encounter Christ?

Well, in truth, it can happen almost anywhere, but there’s one very privileged place. Where is it? It’s the reason your teachers constantly remind you that there’s to be no talking in the Church. God has given one particular place that is the unequaled place of encounter: Mass, and as a result of Mass; the Tabernacle and Adoration.

You guys probably pass a Church many times every week. How often do you call in to speak with Jesus present in the Tabernacle?

You guys change that – start calling in for 10 minutes every day and just talk to him – and he’ll change your whole life, from the inside out, and it’ll be a much better life than the one you’ll make without him!

God is calling you – by name!

But can you hear it? Can you see it? Or will your Confirmation remain unused, an unused key to an unknown kingdom?

Your choice. You choose.

Every ‘problem’ calls us to spiritual growth – the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

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‘Spirit’ Confirmation Programme 1.

Learning about the Gifts of the Holy Spirit!

Briefly, we’ll look at just two of the seven gifts of the Spirit – it’ll give us an idea of how important they are.

Perhaps during the week the parents – teachers too – might adapt or simplify my words and engage the children with the ideas I’m presenting.

Firstly, Wisdom; what’s that? Firstly, it’s a gift of the Holy Spirit. Therefore it doesn’t belong naturally to human nature. It’s a gift given by the Holy Spirit and when we receive it, we know (instinctive-like) that it’s in the spiritual life and not in health and wealth that we find lasting security. Those who don’t have the gift will naturally look for their security in everything from health to wealth.

Secondly, Understanding; what’s that? When we receive the gift of understanding we penetrate the truths of our faith. As we receive it we move from faith into certainty. Those who do not have the gift are always unsure, wobbly, blown this way and that, they lack conviction about God.

The gifts make a big, big difference. They’re synonymous with the spiritual journey into God (synonymous = equivalent in meaning, expressing the same idea). The gifts of the Spirit are the road into God.

Now, tell me, how many of you guys just want to get this part (Mass) over with?

Well, to be honest I was like that when I was your age. And I stayed like that through most of my teenage years.

Until one day in 1983, the 19^th of July – I will never forget the day – I was at home with my father. There was a fire and tragically later that day my father died.

Now apart from the grief, something else happened. I started to ask serious questions about the meaning of life. That one event, and the questions it surfaced within me, changed the whole course of my life.

I believe we’re offering you answers to questions that most of you haven’t even started to ask. (I’m in favour of Confirmation at a later age!)

So the ‘Spirit’ team has produced a programme to give you a good experience of Confirmation in the hope that when (and if!) you do begin to ask the deeper questions, you might remember this positive experience of Confirmation and return to look in more detail.

Meanwhile, some things I’d like you to know and remember. I would like you to know that it’s in the spiritual life – the spiritual life is our life with God – that you will find true and lasting security.

If I could I’d love to spare you the futile effort of trying to find lasting security in this world, in just about everything from health to wealth.

I would like you to know that there’s no difficulty in life that can’t be overcome by spiritual growth.

I would like you to know that every challenge, every difficulty – even if it looks like there’s no way out – every suffering, every sickness is a call to spiritual growth; that it doesn’t have to end in meaningless despair.

Even if you make a complete mess of your life, I want you to know that the mess is nothing more than God’s way of calling you to spiritual growth, to do things differently, to do things his way.

No matter how many times you fall, no matter how many times you fail, remember, every fall, every failure, is God’s call to spiritual growth.

Finally, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, like Confirmation itself, like all the sacraments, belong to the spiritual life and it’s there – and only there – that we receive them.

So, do you have a spiritual life? Yes? No? No! I’m going to be really cruel to you; then what are you doing here?

Click the video links below for a summary of Pope Francis’ catecheses on the gifts of Wisdom and Understanding. (Credit: Rome Reports)

Wisdom