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Homily for Confirmation
2001
Today I rejoice in the Holy Spirit and I thank God, the Lord of heaven and earth, for giving me the joy of being here with you. My dear young people, one of the aspects of my pastoral work that I most enjoy is joining with you, your families, your teachers, and your priests in celebrating this very special Sacrament of Confirmation for you and with you.
Have
you being looking forward to today? I’m
sure you have. And, no doubt, your parents have been looking forward to today
also. Parents, you should be very proud that you have today
fulfilled the promise you made at your children’s baptism. Today we confirm that promise that you made to keep the light
of the baptismal candle, which was entrusted to you at your child’s baptism,
burning brightly to today. There is
a lot of concern regarding young people and the light of faith today.
My experience in the diocese is that the light of faith is still burning
very brightly in the hearts of many of our young people.
In August of last year, the special Jubilee Year, I travelled with a group of three hundred young people to the World Youth Day in Rome. They joined with over two million young people from all over the world to celebrate a Faith Event with the Pope. The weather was very warm and I know that we all like warm weather during the summer, but this made some parts of our pilgrimage very difficult. But the young people carried on through all the difficulties with great joy and enthusiasm. My own faith was strengthened and my love of Church was increased by being with these young people. I learned so much from them. When I look back, I get great joy from the memories and I have great hope for the future of the Church.
If any of you plan to visit Rome, August is perhaps not the best month in which to do so. It was very, very hot. I know we would all like to go to the sun in the summer time wouldn’t we? But the weather in Italy was so warm that the fire brigades had to come out into the crowds of youth and hose them over with cold water to help lower the temperature. There was a lot of hardship on the pilgrimage but at the same time there was great joy.
While
in Rome there were very many wise and intelligent teachers teaching the young
people, particularly the Pope Himself, but many of the things that I learned
were from young people present. These
young people were those that I had confirmed in parishes just a few years
previously. They had been sitting
just were you are now as you begin your journey to an adult faith. They became my teachers when they allowed their hearts to
speak to them and they trusted in what they heard.
They began to believe in themselves and to realize that God really loves
them and believes in them. I walked with them, I talked at length with them,
both in groups and individually; I listened to them and joined in their
celebration of the faith. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed being with them and I learned
what it is that makes them tick. One young man sat down beside me at the
airport, as we were about to leave Rome, and he said: “ You know, Bishop John,
it’s cool to be Catholic here”. He told me he could never say that about
life at home but that, from now on, he was going to work at it. The Holy Father
was very touched by the young people. He wrote: “ If there is an image of the
Jubilee of the Year 2000 that more than any other will live on in memory, it is
surely the streams of young people with whom I was able to engage in a sort of
dialogue, filled with mutual affection and deep understanding….I saw them
swarming through the city, happy as young people should be, but also thoughtful,
eager to pray, seeking ‘meaning’ and true friendship. Neither for them nor
for those who saw them will it be easy to forget that week, during which Rome
became ‘young with the young’.
The young have shown themselves to be for Rome and for the Church a special
gift of the Spirit of God. ( Novo Millennio Ineunte, N.9). These
are the words of the Pope. For me the young, you, are a special gift of the
Spirit of God.
I’m
sure that if I asked your parents and teachers today, my dear friends, they
would tell me that they have learned a lot from you also.
They may not always say it, but I have no doubt that if I asked them they
could all give me countless examples of where they have learned from you.
We are here today because of you! We are here because God loves you,
because God believes in you. You are what is important here today.
Everybody
got dressed up and no doubt some had to travel some distance to get here today. Imagine
how
many have travelled to be here today?
Take a look around you now at this Church crowded with people. Think for
a moment about all the preparation and planning that went into this very moment.
Everyone who is here is here for you today. We are here because we
believe in you and we are here to remind you that God believes in you.
The Holy Spirit is a constant reminder of the belief that God has in each
one of us and that it is God’s desire that we have confidence in whom we are.
Sometimes
it can be hard to believe in yourself at the age of 11 or 12 because you have so
many people telling you what to do, what to wear, whom to meet, what to watch,
how loud you can play your music. Does this happen to you?
It can be hard to see where your voice is heard in the middle of all
this. But your voice is important.
I
want you to take hope from today’s gospel and know that there are things that
you as young people can see and understand that sometimes adults might miss.
There are things that you see and hear that wise and intelligent people
do not see. As I travel to your
schools and read the newspapers I can see that there are many of you who have a
great concern for the environment and are willing to do something about it. That
is very good. There are many of you
also who used the Internet to prepare for your Confirmation.
I
learned this at the Confirmation forum. Were
there some young representatives of this parish at the forum? How many of you
were at the forum? Hands up! We had a great day didn’t we?
Each
year I spend time with representatives of all those who are receiving the
Sacrament of Confirmation at a Confirmation Forum that is organised by the
Diocesan Youth Services. I spend a
lot of time listening to and getting to know young people.
One young person this year asked me ‘was the liturgy going to be very
long’! I am sure she was asking a
question that was in a lot of minds but she had the courage and openness to ask!
Another example of the wisdom of young people!
Many
young confirmation students told me they had used the Internet to learn about
Confirmation and to look up their Patron Saints. This is the first year that this has been mentioned to me.
So you see that the Confirmation class of 2001 taught me something new
about Confirmation this year. Trust
your ideas, trust what you hear in your heart and have confidence that this is
the Holy Spirit at work in you. Sometimes
it can be hard to believe in yourself. Very
often it won’t be easy to follow what you hear in your heart. I’m sure you’ve seen this when you come across somebody
who is being left out, or who is the last chosen to play on a team.
You feel in your heart that this is wrong but it is very hard to go
against what everybody else is doing. It’s like swimming against the tide.
But, if what you hear in your heart is right, then you need courage and strength
to carry it through.
The gifts of the spirit will give you strength to know the right thing to do and you only have to ask for help. The way you ask for this help is by praying. I’m not talking just about long prayers that you learn off but in the simple way that you talk to God. Prayer is about having a relationship with God and like all relationships it takes communicating to get to know one another better. Prayer, talking with Jesus, helps you become aware of the Spirit and the gifts that you receive in your Confirmation will help you. Prayer is important because it opens you to the Holy Spirit and it helps you to know what your heart is saying. To pray and to admit that your faith is important to you will not always be a very easy or popular thing to do. After the Jubilee Year the Pope wrote a letter to all of us. It is well worth reading. In it he speaks about prayer. He calls it the “ art of prayer” and he says we all have to learn this art, to learn to pray. This we do by praying, by talking to Jesus and with Jesus, until the heart truly “ falls in love” with God.
How
many of you have heard of Westlife?
How many of you like the band?
I like the band and I like listening to some of their songs!
Do
some of you not like them? You
know what you like!! I was reading
an interview with Shane of Westlife in a new magazine for teenagers. It’s
called Face Up – For teens who want something deeper. Shane speaks
about how important prayer is to him and how it helps him to remember what’s
important to him. He lives in a
very busy world where few people would admit to prayer being important to them. But he was not afraid to admit that his faith is important to
him. He says: “ I’m a practising Catholic and I say my prayers every night
before I go to bed…It’s something I’ve done all my life. I feel better if
I say it and then go to sleep”.
I’m
sure that, as you prepared for confirmation, you have learned about many people
who have had to make hard choices and decisions and who have had to stand out
from the crowd. Hands
up if you have heard of Mother Teresa?
As you know she had the courage to follow the voice in her heart and help
the people that nobody else wanted to have any thing to do with.
She did this because, through prayer, she fell in love with Jesus.
In
getting ready for today you have listened to the voice within your own hearts,
the voice of God, and you have decided to follow that voice.
Your parents and godparents carried you to the church in their arms when
you were a baby and asked for you to be baptised.
Today you have walked in yourself and in doing so are asking to be
confirmed in your faith. We
honour and welcome that decision on your part.
As you step forward to be confirmed know that we believe in you and
honour and respect your decision. I
encourage you always to be guided by the Holy Spirit in what you do and to have
confidence in yourselves and in that voice within your heart. It is God speaking
to you in the secret of your heart.
If
there was one gift that I would wish to give you today it would be to see
yourself as your families and I see you and know the great joy that you are to
all of us. I want you to know that
we all love you, trust you and believe in you!
I believe in you and God believes in you.
God’s belief in you is confirmed through this Sacrament.
Believe then in yourselves and in the voice in your hearts.
This
is the one message that I want you to take with you today –that God
believes in you - so that in times ahead when you are not confident in
yourselves and when others challenge you to go against what you know is right,
you will put your trust in God because you know He believes in you. You will say
to yourself that God believes in me and you will do what you know is right.
Even in moments of disappointment and fear you will always find hope
because you will remember, “ God believes in me”.
Thank
you for being here today and for teaching me once again, by your presence, about
how great God is so that even in times of doubt, which the Bishop like everyone
else experiences, I will also remember that God Believes in me!
Let us all together remind ourselves then:
God
believes in me!