Congratulations! You’re confirmed. You’re considered an adult in the Catholic Church now. Feel on fire with the Holy Spirit and certain about the gifts entrusted to you to help build the kingdom of God? Ready to begin fulfilling God’s will in your life and know exactly how that’s to take place?
No?
For many, the day after Confirmation signals the long walk into a spiritual wasteland. The pews remain empty, and the hearts stop searching or coming to mass until they want to be married in the church, or have children baptized Catholic. Christmas and Easter are good enough right? As long as I’m following most of the commandments…I’m recycling and I’m not axe murdering anyone or embezzling from a major company so, I’m good.
The stats about Catholics between the ages of 16 and 30 are sobering, even when you just focus on church attendees. Once the classes stop and there isn’t an immediate sacrament that requires preparation, people don’t recognize that growing one’s faith is an ever ongoing process of discernment. Pursuing God is chasing the infinite. You never reach the end of loving, so also, you never reach the end of discovering there is more to know about God, more to love.
Every day, we must seek to do God’s will, and ask for God to send us guidance via scripture, other people, and the encouragement that comes through small successes. We do not do well without a consistent trail of spiritual bread crumbs to lead us along. We need consultations. We need if not miracles, reminders on a regular basis, on where we are headed and how to get there.
As a group of us sat discussing what to do to evangelize and catechize the confirmed, my own brain toyed with the idea of “The After Confirmation, Beyond CCD” class but my own brain also quipped, “That’s also known as Sunday Mass.” God invites us to come each week and feast upon His words and His flesh. It doesn’t get more intimate than the Eucharist, but somehow, we pretend it isn’t.
So I’m writing you to tell you, God always is, and He never revokes His gifts. You will spend a lifetime discovering them and God’s will but that’s good, because God has also alloted to you, a lifetime. He knows every hair on your head, and all your loves, worries, sins and successes, all your failures and all your struggles. He knows, and He is inviting you to know Him ever more deeply. Be willing to wrestle with God, and to be uncomfortable but accepting when you lose. You will lose. I’m reminded of a game I’ve never learned to play, at least not well. We bought “Go” a few years back, and every time I play, I lose. I lose spectacularly. Being a poor sport, I no longer want to play “Go.” However, I’ve been told by those who love the game, that if you want to really learn to play, you must be willing to lose. You must lose and lose and lose until you suddenly understand the nature of how you must think to play. I have I admit, been unwilling to wrestle with Go. God yes, Go, no.
Still, a class that helps those after the course work, wrestle with questions they perhaps were too timid to voice, or not yet struggling to address would provide young adults with the spiritual armor needed to withstand the allure of the world. We do not know who we are reaching when we speak, only that the Holy Spirit will direct our words if we consent, and find the ears that are open to hearing God’s voice. Who knows, sometimes the voice that may need to be listening is our own.
Think I’m going to try to let myself be frustrated this weekend with Go a bit, and remind myself that the goal of life, is not victory or success or fame or even peace. It’s love. It’s God. God is love and a good life, a winning life, a mature life is learning how to love the world as God loves.
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