By Jim Mcdermott
Last fall my 17-year-old niece asked me to be her confirmation sponsor. And when I traveled to Wisconsin for the ceremony this spring, I noticed that she seemed to be having some anxiety about it all. I wondered if she was having second thoughts about getting confirmed. But when we talked, it turned out her qualms had nothing to do with receiving the sacrament.
She was worried about the ceremony.
“Is it true the bishop is going to ask us questions?” she asked. I didn’t know for sure, but it is pretty standard for the bishop to use the homily to have a chat with the kids, sometimes in the form of a Q&A, but usually playfully so. I tried to reassure her that this was not anything to worry about. She was not convinced. Her religious education teachers had given them things they needed to have memorized for the service, like the seven gifts of the Spirit. That didn’t sound like the basis for a friendly conversation. “If I don’t know the answer,” she wondered, “do I fail?”
I don’t know how the tradition of the bishop using his homily during a confirmation to do a Q&A began. If you think about it, it’s actually pretty strange. In no other sacramental setting do we ask those receiving sacraments to prepare to be chatted up, let alone publicly quizzed. We don’t do it with adults entering the church at the Easter Vigil. We don’t do it at weddings for the couples getting married. We don’t even do it at ordinations, a moment when some might argue the seriousness of the role being entered into, the impact that those being ordained will have on the people of God, merits a bit of public questioning.
Continue reading in NCR Online
