Dear New Confirmandi,

You already have the gifts of courage, listening, understanding, humor, intellect and kindness. You show it every day with how you navigate the many personalities that you encounter, including your parents. The saint you chose to guide you is a reminder to the world of the destiny God desires for all of us.

You also constantly teach us how to love more deeply, and that love is first and foremost and always a choice to will the good of the other. That has been your mission, and in truth, the mission of each child from conception forward.

You are God’s invitation to us — an invitation we’ve already answered “Yes” to by loving each other, and by choosing to love more. That is the great mystery of love — that all love involves serving the other, through time, through sacrifice, through service, through words, through actions, through everything, through all things.

The good news is that God is with us. I can tell you that the Holy Spirit is, and wants to be, active in your life, and the more you allow the Holy Spirit to act, the more visible this Third Person of the Holy Trinity becomes.

Here’s my best advice on becoming a friend of the Holy Spirit:

• Go to Confession often (at least every month, if possible)
• Practice kindness, most especially when you don’t feel it.
• Practice mercy when you want justice or revenge.
• Confirmation is the beginning of living an adult faith life, not the end of faith formation.
• Prayers are always answered. Pray often. Pray for your family daily.
• Ask others to pray for you too. We are, and we will.
• Go to Mass — even, and perhaps most especially, when you’re not feeling it.

Love is not a feeling — it’s an act of the will. It always was. Feelings are transitory. Being ruled by feelings means being ruled by misery, loneliness, anger, hurt, sickness, suffering and disappointment. Life includes bumps, bruises, scrapes, sufferings, agonies, hurts, despairs, injustices, cruelties, wrongs, grave evils and deep sins, because all of these exist as a constant part of simply being human and living in this world. Love makes enduring all these things possible.

Why? How?

Love is bigger than all those big things because it is not merely a feeling, not merely an emotion, and not merely a custom, tradition, rule, or part of a creed. God is love, and anyone who loves God will love others. We love others only to the extent we love God. We will love God only to the extent we love others. That’s the great reality — that our love of others is limited by us, but God’s love for us is unlimited. Hence one can say that on the Cross, Christ is loving us, and rejoices in what his crucifixion offers, even though the experience itself is all those awful things I listed and more.

If you ever feel unloved or alone, look at the Crucifixion. God is there, loving you.

The Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, is inviting us to love others, because the Spirit lives within us, offering us graces and gifts that equip us to help build up the Body of Christ in the world. You will spend your lifetime discovering and uncovering the graces you received through Confirmation as you cooperate with God in your faith life. Figuring out what those gifts are — that’s the trick of examination, of thinking about not simply your talents, but the things that others seek you out for. Things like healing, instruction, service, help, restoration and peace.

It may come easy, it may be a wrestling match, and it takes a lifetime and you will not know all. However, look at what you offer (your loaves and fishes) that God multiplies, that God blesses and shares beyond what you could imagine. That’s the Holy Spirit breathing on your talents, your offerings, so they can be shared beyond what you would consider.

That’s what Confirmation gives us — the Holy Spirit in a radical and intimate way, for a definitive purpose that you will spend your life discovering.

As fellow pilgrims on this faith journey, we can say that we look forward to watching you grow into whatever role God has commissioned. All our love and prayers, all my heart — it’s why we’re given eternity to love, because anything less than eternity is not enough for love.

Praying for and with you always,

The Body of Christ (The Rest of Us in the Pews)