Tag: prose

The rosary has held a very special place in my own devotional life since even before I was a Catholic. Early in the journey of my conversion, I heard a passionate Dominican sermon on the miracles of the rosary and enrolled in the Confraternity of the Rosary that very day, a year or more before I was received into the Church! In the years before entering seminary, I prayed the rosary fervently before and after daily Mass to obtain the grace of clarity in my vocational discernment. In fact, I attribute all the graces of my conversion and my vocation to Our Lady’s intercession. Although there was a time in college seminary that I was inconsistent in praying the rosary, I always returned to it in difficult moments, times of testing and turmoil. One day, when I saw a young man walking hand in hand with his girlfriend down the hill from Mount Angel Abbey and felt some pangs of loneliness and self-pity, I was deeply consoled by the thought that I was holding Mary’s hand as I walked praying her rosary. Another time, when my mom was suddenly hospitalized due to a serious illness and I was hundreds of miles away, feeling powerless and afraid, I felt capable of no other prayer than the continuous repetition of the rosary, which got me through long, dark hours until I heard the good news that she was okay.

I could go on and on with stories of the consolation and strength Our Lady’s rosary has been to me over the years. As I was reflecting on the parish devotional life here at St. Mary’s, however, I was struck by the many and varied ways in which the rosary has brought people together here and given the gifts of peace, hope and communion in such different circumstances. On several occasions, I have had the privilege of leading the rosary before a funeral. Sometimes the gathering of the family before the funeral is tearful, sometimes raucous and noisy, but in both cases I have noticed how this communal prayer, with its soothing repetition like the advancing tide, allows people to settle into a spirit of stillness and peace. It is a perfect preparation for the funeral liturgy. On another occasion, I helped lead the rosary at a pro-life rally, kicking off the Forty Days for Life campaign on the sidewalk outside our local Planned Parenthood clinic. Here again I was struck by the contrast: the rosary made of us an oasis of peace in a place of ugliness, violence, noise and fury. I led a rosary for discernment at the first meeting of our parish priestly discernment group, handing on the great gift I had received in my own early discernment. I have prayed the rosary every week at our parish holy hours, the decades alternating between English, Spanish, and Latin, and I imagine the delight it must bring Our Lady to receive our grateful praises and prayers in our different tongues, like a bouquet of different kinds of flowers bound together by our common love for her and her Son. I think, too, of the decades I prayed in a hospital room with a parishioner who wept, saying how long it had been since she had prayed with another person and what a comfort this familiar prayer was. I knew exactly what she meant. 

Why is the rosary so effective in such vastly different situations, for people of such different cultures, backgrounds and even spiritualities and temperaments, at bringing peace, stillness, comfort, clarity, and countless other spiritual gifts besides? The liturgical handbook of the Archdiocese remarks that “foremost among the Marian devotions is the rosary, which is a kind of compendium of the Gospel and, as such, it is a profoundly Christian devotion that helps the faithful to contemplate the mysteries of the life of Jesus Christ through the eyes of the Virgin Mary.”¹ The key, I believe, is that this devotion leads naturally to contemplation. As Saint John Paul the Great eloquently writes, “with the Rosary, the Christian people [are] led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love … The Rosary belongs among the finest and most praiseworthy traditions of Christian contemplation.”² To reach this end, it must of course be truly prayed and not merely recited, as Pope St. Paul VI instructs us:

Without contemplation, the Rosary is a body without a soul, and its recitation runs the risk of becoming a mechanical repetition of formulas, in violation of the admonition of Christ: ‘In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard for their many words’ (Mt 6:7). By its nature the recitation of the Rosary calls for a quiet rhythm and a lingering pace, helping the individual to meditate on the mysteries of the Lord’s life as seen through the eyes of her who was closest to the Lord.³

When the rosary is in fact prayed in this way, it leads to a deep interior stillness before the face of Christ and alongside Mary, His mother and ours. In fact, to quote Pope St. John Paul II one final time, “the Rosary mystically transports us to Mary’s side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth. This enables her to train us and to mold us with the same care, until Christ is ‘fully formed’ in us (cf. Gal 4:19).”⁴ Like all authentically Christian contemplative prayer, then, the prayer of the rosary does not merely achieve a fleeting psychic state of tranquility; it accomplishes our ever deeper conformity to and union with Jesus Christ.

In spite of the long and profound personal history with the rosary I mentioned above, there was a time when I was first discovering the riches of contemplative prayer that I felt I had “outgrown” the rosary, in favor of purely mental prayer. I was annoyed at parishes where the rosary was prayed before or after Mass, since I preferred to spend that time in the prayer of quiet, preparing for Mass or making my thanksgiving. After more experience with both contemplative prayer and pastoral ministry, and studying at the feet of such great masters, I now see the rosary more clearly as a truly indispensable treasure of our Roman Catholic tradition given to us by the Mother of God herself for our sanctification. As a pastor, therefore, I want to promote the prayer of the rosary among parish groups, at Holy Hours, during the novenas for Marian feast days, on regular processions (I know of one pastor who holds monthly “rosary walks” around his parish boundaries) and on as many other occasions as possible. The Liturgical Handbook notes that “the Catholic faithful enjoy the right to pray the rosary on most occasions,”⁵ and as a shepherd I intend to zealously guard and promote that right.

Footnotes

1. Archdiocesan Liturgical Handbook (Portland, OR: Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon, 2018), 18.6.6.
2. Pope St. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae (16 October 2002), 1, 5.
3. Pope St. Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus (2 February 1974), 47.
4. John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 15.
5. ALH, 14.8.6.

Last month, I had the honor of assisting at two funeral liturgies only days apart. That in itself would not be so unusual; we have had many funerals since I arrived here in August. What makes this particular sequence of funerals stand out in my memory is the vastly different circumstances of the deceased. The first was a boy less than six months old whose parents awoke one morning to find him lying dead in his crib. The family were heartbroken, the parents inconsolable. Since no one in the family felt up to the task of reading during that liturgy, I proclaimed these words from the Wisdom of Solomon, which have remained in my heart:

The righteous one, though he die early, shall be at rest. For the age that is honorable comes not with the passing of time, nor can it be measured in terms of years … The one who pleased God was loved, living among sinners, was transported—snatched away … Having become perfect in a short while, he reached the fullness of a long career; for his soul was pleasing to the LORD, therefore he sped him out of the midst of wickedness.¹

Wisdom 4:7-14

My pastor admitted during his homily that he did not have the words to take away their pain, when all they wanted was to hold their child in their arms again. All that he could give them was the assurance that God is greater than death. This he indeed proclaimed, and then fell silent. The last thing I remember is standing beside him for a long time in silence as the men and boys took turns, one by one, shoveling dirt into his open grave.

The second funeral was for a woman who had just surpassed her hundredth birthday. Our church was packed with her relatives, down to the fifth generation of great-great-grandchildren, and they all congregated afterwards in front of the church, the kids eating cookies and playing, the adults swapping stories amid hugs and tearful smiles.

It would be hard to imagine two more different funerals! Though the liturgy was substantially the same, the fundamental difference is that the family in the latter case had many years to spend with the deceased. They felt that she had lived a long life and a good one. In the former, they felt that their child’s life had been cut short almost before it had begun; they mourned not only for him but for the future they had hoped to see, the years and memories that would never be. What can soothe a grief as enormous as that? I am sure my pastor was right in admitting that words could never be enough. As he also told me as we left the cemetery, the family would probably not remember the words we had said at all. They would, however, remember that we were there, and that we stayed.

It is only natural that the funeral of a hundred year old mother of many generations would be celebrated with more festivity, with sorrow interpenetrated with joy and laughter, than the unexpected, inconceivable funeral of a little baby. Yet the wisdom of that first reading is profound. Though they may not have been capable of receiving it then, I hope that the family do remember those words, for there is consolation and power in them: “The age that is honorable comes not with the passing of time, nor can it be measured in terms of years. Rather, understanding passes for gray hair, and an unsullied life is the attainment of old age” (Wis 4:8-9).

The Lord measures out a span of days for each one of us—“seventy is the sum of our years, or eighty, if we are strong; most of them are toil and sorrow; they pass quickly, and we are gone” (Ps 90:10). When a life comes to an end, our human tendency is to judge it by its length, by their accomplishments, by the number of their descendants and the memories they made with those who survive them. We mourn the more bitterly for those who die early with none of these. But our prayer must be that of the Psalmist: “Teach us to count our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart” (Ps 90:12). Counting our days aright means, in part, judging the real value of our human lives from God’s perspective, who is unimpressed by our accomplishments or length of days. The real value of a life is that the one who lived was a child of God, His beloved, who loved Him in return as best they could. Thus our Archdiocesan Liturgical Handbook teaches that

Holy Mother Church, who … generates to a new and immortal life the children who are born to her in Baptism, and nourishes them by the sacraments during their earthly pilgrimage, accompanies each of them at his journey’s end, in order to surrender him ‘into the Father’s hands.’ She offers to the Father, in Christ, the child of his grace, and she commits to the earth, in hope, the seed of the body that will rise in glory.²

When we die, all that matters is that the one who came from God is returning to Him. We, the Church, pray that the holy angels speed them on their way, that the Father receives them with joy, and that, “even if final purifications are still necessary in order to be clothed with the nuptial garment of eternal joy and salvation,”³ they will soon partake in the wedding feast of the Lamb, where we hope to be reunited with them for all eternity.

As a priest, I hope to follow my pastor’s good example of keeping silent watch in moments of such extreme suffering and tribulation, being present with those who are in suffering and having the self-awareness to realize that many words will do more harm than good. At the same time, I hope to follow his example in simply and boldly announcing our faith that God is greater than death. And I hope to keep close to my heart and at the forefront of my mind—and to share it with those who grieve the loss of a loved one, when the time is right—that the value of each of our lives is determined not by our length of days or any of our accomplishments, but by the infinite love of God.

Footnotes

1. New American Bible, Revised Edition (Washington, DC: Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 2010).
2. Archdiocesan Liturgical Handbook (Portland, OR: Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon, 2018), 14.1.1.
3. ALH, 14.1.2.

Since the promulgation of the new Code of Canon Law in 1983, the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick has undergone a remarkable development in practice. Where once it was only given only to those members of “the faithful who … from infirmity or old age become in danger of death,”¹ the Church, by means of this sacrament, now “commends to the suffering and glorified Lord the faithful who are dangerously ill [periculose aegrotantes] so that he may support and save them.”² The specific reference to the danger of death in the 1917 Code is conspicuous by its absence from the 1983 Code. This change, in fact, as well as the change in the very name of the sacrament from Extreme Unction (or ‘final anointing’) to the Anointing of the Sick, was made “in an endeavour to make it clear that it ‘is not a sacrament for those only who are at the point of death,’”³ but for “any man sick among you” (Jas 5:14) whose illness is serious.

By extending the gift of this Sacrament to more of Christ’s faithful who are in suffering, including those with chronic illnesses and even mental illnesses which constitute a real share in the Cross, even though they may not place them in immediate danger of death, the Church implicitly acknowledges the dignity and the particular “vocation of the sick.”⁴ Indeed, “the sick, especially the chronically ill, share in the Church’s life and mission … United to Christ, the baptized and confirmed ‘sick person is consecrated to bear fruit by configuration to the Savior’s redemptive passion.’”⁵ The Sacrament of Anointing is not only the means by which the Church intercedes for her suffering son or daughter to receive strength and healing, though it is certainly that; it also renews and deepens the sick person’s union with the suffering Christ, that they might “fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ” (Col 1:24 DRA) by their own bodily participation in His redemptive Passion. Therefore the Church consoles the sick that their “sickness has meaning and value for their own salvation and for the salvation of the world.”⁶ 

This affirmation of the dignity of the sick and of their participation in the Church’s mission precisely by means of their sickness is of critical importance in increasingly decadent, secular Western societies such as ours, which, through the habitual and legal practice of euthanasia, tacitly deny the value of suffering and degrade the dignity of the sick and aged. Often those who are chronically ill or disabled, particularly the elderly, can fall into depression and despair. They may feel that their life is as good as over, that they no longer have any role to play or any meaningful impact to make in the world. Against such diabolic lies, the Church insists with a mother’s solicitude that the sick may yet “contribute to the good of the People of God by freely uniting themselves to the Passion and death of Christ,”⁷ in particular “to offer their sufferings for missionaries,” by which offering “the sick themselves become missionaries!”⁸ Rather than only marking the end of a Christian’s pilgrimage through life and sending him on his final journey to the heavenly homeland, the Anointing of the Sick now serves to fortify and exhort a Christian soul in suffering to do their part in the battle for the world’s salvation, a part which they are uniquely suited to play: “Some work of noble note may yet be done.”⁹

Footnotes

1. “Fideles qui … ob infirmitatem vel senium in periculo mortis versetur.” Code of Canon Law/1917, c. 940, in Codex iuris canonici 1917, at Biblia Clerus, http://www.clerus.org. Translation mine.
2. Code of Canon Law, c. 998, in Code of Canon Law Annotated (Woodridge: Midwest Theological Forum, 2004), 764.
3. Code of Canon Law Annotated, 764. Inner quote is from Paul VI, Sacrosanctum concilium [Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy] (December 4, 1963), 73.
4. Archdiocesan Liturgical Handbook (Portland, OR: Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon, 2018), 12.1.7.
5. ALH, 12.1.6. Inner quote is from Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), 1521; cf. also CCC 1294, 1523.
6. Pastoral Care of the Sick: Rites of Anointing and Viaticum, trans. and ed. International Commission on English in the Liturgy (Totowa, NJ: Catholic Book Publishing Corp., 1983), 1.
7. ALH, 12.1.5.
8. John Paul II, qtd. in S. de Boer, “The Collective Anointing of the Weak,” Questions liturgiques 76 (1995), 74.
9. Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses,” 52, at poets.org.

This week, I was approached by a woman at the RCIA who wanted to go to confession right away. Although she did not specify the reason (and of course I did not ask), I surmised that she had felt convicted by what we had been studying in the course of the lesson, and the gentle action of the Holy Spirit had moved her heart to repent and seek reconciliation with God and the Church. When she learned that I was unable to hear her confession right then and there, she asked me to help her make an appointment with the pastor at the earliest available time. 

The urgency of her desire to repent and be reconciled to God made an impression on me. In fact, just the day before, I had been in a similar position, feeling convicted by my conscience of a grave sin and in need of repentance and absolution. Because I am a seminarian and have personal connections with various priests in the vicariate, I was able to text a priest friend, drive out to his parish, go to confession that same hour, and stay for dinner. This woman felt the same compunction of heart, but did not have the luxury I did of such easy access to the sacrament of the Lord’s forgiveness. Although I could have passed her off to the parish office to make an appointment through the usual channels, I went to some extra effort as an intermediary working on her behalf to get her on the pastor’s schedule as soon as possible, following the pastor’s own advice: “Being pastoral means ‘more work for me.’”

This encounter highlighted for me the profound connection between the Sacrament of Penance and the overall process of conversion for candidates, such as this woman, who have previously been baptized in a non-Catholic ecclesial community. To be sure, the guidelines of the Archdiocese of Portland state that “in preparation for reception and completion of sacramental Initiation, and at a time prior to and distinct from the Rite of Reception, [such] candidates, according to their own consciences, should receive the Sacrament of Penance,” since this sacrament “provides grace and help to continuing conversion.”¹ The same guidelines indicate that “it is fitting that such candidates celebrate the Sacrament of Penance in a communal setting with other members of the Catholic community, especially during Lent,” which is in fact a normal and scheduled part of RCIA every year in our parish, although “it is also possible to arrange a communal celebration specifically for the candidates, or to allow them to approach the sacrament privately.”² 

To my mind, it seems pastorally desirable to make the latter option as freely available as possible to such candidates. This woman had the courage to approach me and make an appointment, but there may be others who are afraid to do so, or are perhaps unaware that they can even go to confession before they are formally received into the Church. Therefore, as a priest, I would like to let the candidates for RCIA know from day one that if they are baptized, they are invited to approach the Sacrament of Penance at any time. They are free to come to the regularly scheduled confession times of the parish or to approach me any time they see me and ask for a “quick confession.” I would make it my promise to them (and the parish as a whole) that, unless I am directly on my way to a sick call or a meeting, etc., I will always honor those requests. Furthermore, I would make it my goal to be present at the RCIA nights as often as I can, every week if possible, precisely to be available for such requests. (My pastor has been good at being present, but he was not there that night; if he had been, I’m sure he would have heard this woman’s confession on the spot!) It may be more work for me, but it will mean a lot to them. 

Footnotes

1. Archdiocesan Liturgical Handbook (Portland, OR: Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon, 2018), 6.36.4. Cf. Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (1988),482; National Statues for the Catechumenate (Washington, DC: National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1986), no. 36; Code of Canon Law, cann. 844 §4, 959.
2. ALH, 6.36.5.

When I told my pastor last week that we were doing a module on matrimony, he shared with me about a delicate issue which often comes up in his work preparing couples for marriage. Cohabitation is not only extremely widespread in our day and age, among Catholics as well as non-believers; it is commonly understood in the secular culture to be the “responsible choice,” a prudent way to test your compatibility with your partner in the close quarters of common life, a kind of trial run before “tying the knot.” Most young people of my own generation would not dream of getting married without first having lived together as a couple. Father Nelson remarked that he often struggles to know exactly what to say to these couples, who come in good faith asking to be married in the Church, yet who have sometimes already been living together for months or years. The pastoral judgment required is whether to insist that the couple separate, at the risk of driving them away, or allow them to continue living together (emphasizing the need for them to live as brother and sister in perfect continence) and risk their falling into grave sin, as well as jeopardizing the future health and longevity of their marriage.

Although cohabitation per se is not a sin, Father Nelson mentioned that couples who live together before their wedding day may be less free in giving their consent to the marriage as a result of their cohabitation. Even if they live together chastely, the lives of a couple cohabiting before marriage necessarily become more “entangled.” They have the same residence; they share common possessions, and perhaps finances and debts. There may be a concern on the part of one or the other party of where they will live or how they will get by financially if the relationship should fail. It is, moreover, a matter of fact that most cohabiting couples are also fornicating couples (the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults actually defines cohabitation as “involv[ing] the serious sin of fornication”¹) and that “many children are born to these relationships, which are not founded on a permanent commitment.”² All these factors and more can weigh on the minds and hearts of the cohabiting couple and tip the scales of their discernment toward marriage, such that one or both may no longer find themselves entering into the matrimonial covenant in utter freedom. 

Their prior living situation would also appear to shift the meaning of the sacrament from the beginning of a new life together as husband and wife to the mere “ratification” or “blessing” of an existing de facto union. Our Holy Father of happy memory, Saint John Paul II, stressed the following “basic principle: in order to be real and free conjugal love, love must be transformed into one that is due in justice through the free act of marital consent.”³ Apart from the risk of diminished freedom, which can put the validity of the marriage itself in doubt down the line, another subjective danger to the cohabiting couple is that the habits of mind they will have undoubtedly formed during their time cohabiting before marriage will then carry over into their married life as husband and wife, blurring “the essential difference between a mere de facto union—even though it claims to be based on love—and marriage, in which love is expressed in a commitment that is not only moral but rigorously juridical.”⁴ An unmarried couple living together are free to separate at any time if the relationship becomes difficult or inconvenient (albeit to the great psychological harm of the abandoned spouse and any children of the union⁵). Human nature being what it is, the couple who have become habituated during their period of cohabitation to thinking “in the back of their minds that if things become really difficult, they can always go their separate ways”⁶ are naturally more likely to divorce.⁷ 

If a cohabiting couple came to me as a priest for marriage preparation, I would apply the official pastoral guidelines of the Archdiocese of Portland: “Absent children, [cohabiting] couples should ready themselves for marriage by a time of domestic separation. Where a cohabiting couple already has children, the good of the young may require the couple to remain living together, but in chastity and continence.”⁸ If there are other special circumstances which make separation difficult or impossible in a particular case, I would allow them to continue living together (as brother and sister) as they prepare for marriage, but this would be exceptional. In general, I would require them to separate. I would take special care to impress upon all such couples (1) the need to be able to give their utterly free consent to the marriage and (2) the reality that, once married, their relationship will be permanently and essentially different. To this end, I would lead them through an examination of conscience to help them see if anything about their living situation is placing undue pressure on one or both of them to marry. I would also tell them unequivocally that cohabitation is by no means a kind of “trial marriage,” but a poor facsimile of married life which, far from preparing them well for their future as a couple, tends to set a couple up for future failure. I would tell them the best thing they can do for their marriage is to separate and “practice chastity until they are sacramentally or canonically married. They will find this challenging, but again, with the help of grace, mastering the self is possible — and this fasting from sexual intimacy is a strong element of spiritual preparation for an enduring life together.”⁹

Footnotes

1. United States Catholic Catechism for Adults (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2006), 410, at https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/uscca/files/assets/basic-html/page-438.html.
2. Archbishop Alexander K. Sample, “Pastoral Guidelines for Implementing Amoris Laetitia in the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon” (May 4, 2017), 6, at https://d2y1pz2y630308.cloudfront.net/14211/documents/2017/5/050417%20AL%20Guidelines%20with%20Letter.pdf.
3. Pontifical Council for the Family, “Family, Marriage, and ‘De Facto’ Unions” (July 26, 2000), §22, at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/family/documents/rc_pc_family_doc_20001109_de-facto-unions_en.html.
4. John Paul II, “Discourse to the Tribunal of the Roman Rota” (January 2, 1999), qtd. in “Family, Marriage, and ‘De Facto’ Unions,” §22.
5. Cf. Rick Fitzgibbons, M.D., “The pope seems to be missing the real dangers of cohabitation. It’s time for the Church to get serious” (November 18, 2016) at LifeSiteNews, https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/cohabitation-unions-a-risk-to-marriage-adults-and-children.
6. Kansas Catholic Conference, “A Better Way: A Pastoral Letter to the People of God in the Province of Kansas Addressing Cohabitation before Marriage” (June 4, 1998), ed. Damian Lenshek, 8, at https://www.kofc.org/un/en/resources/cis/cis308.pdf.
7. According to a study reported in American Family Association Journal, July 1993, couples who cohabited before marriage had a 50 percent higher chance of divorce than couples who did not cohabitate.
8. Sample, “Pastoral Guidelines for Implementing Amoris Laetitia,” 7.
9. Ibid.

In the Liturgical Handbook of the Archdiocese of Portland, great care is taken to emphasize the unity of the sacraments of initiation. For example, our parishes are instructed that “in teachings, discussions, and publications regarding First Holy Communion, it must always be clear that the candidates are, by Baptism, already members of the Body of Christ and living in communion with the Lord. They are to be welcomed into full Eucharist sharing,”¹ which, as the Catechism teaches, “completes Christian initiation. Those who have been raised to the dignity of the royal priesthood by Baptism and configured more deeply to Christ by Confirmation participate with the whole community in the Lord’s own sacrifice by means of the Eucharist.”² The First Holy Communion of children or new converts is to be understood as the crowning glory of their Christian initiation: the grace given in baptism, brought to “completion” in Confirmation³ and restored in the Sacrament of Penance⁴ is all for the sake of that “communion in the divine life”⁵ given in the Most Holy Eucharist.

Last weekend, I was able to participate in a Mass at which three of our young parishioners received the Sacrament of Confirmation. They were the last of this year’s cohort of confirmandi, who have been receiving the sacrament in groups of two and three at various Masses (to avoid large gatherings) since the spring. Closer to Advent now than Easter, I joked with them that they were coming in awfully late in the game! Later, however, after reading Mr. Clark’s comments about the restored order of the sacraments of initiation practiced in the Diocese of Honolulu, I reflected that all of our confirmandi come in rather “late in the game.” In the Archdiocese of Portland, children are to be enrolled in catechetical programs preparing for their First Communion “when they approach the age of reason,”⁶ which is understood to be at “the completion of the seventh year,”⁷ while “young Catholics who were baptized as infants are confirmed in the freshman or sophomore years in high school.”⁸ In practice, this means that our young people receive Holy Communion at age seven and Confirmation around age fourteen or fifteen – some seven or eight years later! 

The great delay seems to contradict the logic, described in the above quoted passages, by which Christian initiation presses on from one’s Baptism as an infant through Confirmation, by which the baptismal grace is completed, toward the sacramental union of one’s First Holy Communion, the telos and climax of the whole process. When I brought this up with him, my pastor commented that Confirmation is sometimes treated as a “carrot,” a prize which can be dangled in front of parents to entice them to bring their children back to Mass and enroll them again in religious education classes. Sometimes, he said, the families disappear after their children’s First Communion and we don’t see them again until Confirmation. There is a fear that if we were to restore the order of the sacraments of initiation practiced in the early Church, with Confirmation preceding First Communion, those families would never come back again! 

Apart from the questionable practice of withholding the graces of the sacraments from young people who need them in an effort to manipulate their parents into coming to Mass (if this is in fact the motivation of some), I can’t help but wonder whether part of the reason for these families’ disappearance in the first place might not be our own inconsistent sacramental logic. By and large, the Christian faithful understand the supreme importance of Holy Communion. When their children are admitted to Communion at age seven, but Confirmation is delayed until almost a decade later, they may wonder how important Confirmation really is. Taken out from its natural place leading up to and preparing for Communion, it seems a bit like a vestigial organ, of uncertain necessity. This may lead to the invention of new meanings for the sacrament in an effort to justify its continued importance, such as “marking the ‘coming of age’ of a candidate,”⁹ an interpretation which the Archdiocese has lately condemned.

The decision to restore or not to restore the ancient order is entirely up to the Archbishop. I know he has discussed it with his Presbyteral Council. As a priest, however, I can be mindful about teaching the people in my sacramental preparation programs about the ancient order of the sacraments, the essential unity of the three sacraments of initation, why we presently celebrate Holy Communion “out of order” (due to Pope Pius X’s desire for children to receive Communion at an earlier age), and why Confirmation is still necessary even after First Communion for the completion of baptismal grace. I also want to be careful never to treat Confirmation as a “carrot,” as my pastor said. If families are disappearing from Mass after their children receive their sacraments, then I want to visit them, like a good father, and ask them what happened. If we have an epidemic of disappearing families, then there are surely urgent problems in the liturgy, catechesis, adult faith formation, or the life of the community which need to be addressed and reformed. 

Footnotes

1. Archdiocesan Liturgical Handbook (Portland, OR: Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon, 2018), 10.12.2.
2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2^nd ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), 1322.
3. “Confirmation is necessary for the completion of baptismal grace” (ALH, 9.1.4). Cf. also CCC, 1285.
4. “This sacrament [Penance] is rooted in baptismal grace and leads toward complete reconciliation in the Eucharist” (ALH, 10.11.10).
5. CCC, 1325.
6. ALH, 10.10.4.
7. ALH, 10.6.2.
8. ALH, 9.8.6.
9. ALH, 9.1.5.