My sister, Mary, is a teacher on the Big Island in Hawaii. At the end of last summer, the parish that she attends were looking for some catechists for the upcoming year. She figured that since God had given her the talents to be be a teacher, she would offer some of what God had given her back in service to the Church, so she volunteered to be a catechist in the parish religious education program. She was told that she would teach the 2^nd grade, which was a grade level that she had taught in her regular job.

She was pretty excited thinking that she would be preparing her students for the reception of First Penance and First Holy Communion, so a very important milestone year is these children’s faith life. Then she called me, not in a panic, but a bit nervous and surprised. Her pastor informed her that she would also have the responsibility of preparing the children for the sacrament of Confirmation. What was going on here? Confirmation is suppose to be down in middle school, like 8^thgrade, right?

What was going on is the Diocese of Honolulu (which comprises the whole State of Hawaii) has restore the Sacraments to the proper, theological order: Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist. He is a very brief history of the Sacrament of Confirmation.

From the Early Church, Confirmation was seen as the sacrament which completed the Sacrament of Baptism. Whereas Baptism incorporates the person into the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, through the special strength of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation the person is empowered to participate in the mission of the Church – to make disciples of all the nations. In a certain way, the Sacrament of Confirmation, perpetuates the grace of Pentecost in the Church.

In the first centuries, Confirmation generally comprised one single celebration with Baptism, forming what St. Cyprian call a “double sacrament.” As infant baptism became more of the norm, it became impossible for the bishop to be present at all the celebrations of this “double sacrament.” In the Western part of the Church, the desire was to reserve the completion of Baptism to the bishop, so there developed a temporal separation of Baptism and Confirmation. Yet the order of the Sacraments of Initiation were kept the same: Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist. It was common for the Bishop to come to a parish and Confirm those prepared when they were about 14 years old, and then the next day they would receive their First Holy Communion.

That changed in 1910 when Pope Pius X lowered the age of First Communion to age 7, which psychological research indicated was the “age of reason.” The Holy Father just assumed that the local bishops would also move the age of Confirmation to age 7 as well, to keep the proper order of the Sacraments of Initiation, but most of them did not. 

For the past 25 years, an increasing number of dioceses from around the world have started to restore the Sacraments of Initiation to their proper theological order. Currently there are about a dozen diocese in the United States (out of just under 200 dioceses) that have restored the order of the Sacraments of Initiation.

One thing that this points out is that Confirmation is NOT a sacrament of Christian maturity, rather it is a completion of the Sacrament of Baptism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that the Sacrament of Confirmation has the following effects: it roots us more deeply in the divine filiation, it unites us more firmly to Christ, it increases the gifts of the Holy Spirit in us, it renders our bond with the Church more perfect, and most importantly, “it gives us a special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ, to confess the name of Christ boldly, and never to be ashamed of the Cross” (CCC #1303).