Confirmation

Confirmation. At St. Margaret Mary's Parochial School, confirmation was held every other year. This resulted in you either being confirmed in 5th grade or 6th. It fell during my 5th grade year, so I was ten years old when I was confirmed. In the Catholic Church confirmation is considered one of the seven sacraments. In order to be confirmed we were required to commit to memory over fifty questions and answers from our catechism. We had to be able to recite the answers word for word. Questions like, "Who made me?,""God made me in his image and likeness." Part of the process was picking a confirmation name. I remember arriving in class that day having completely forgotten about this. I had not considered any name, and when put on the spot chose Mary the mother of Christ. To be honest I never really liked this name, maybe because it rhymed with Shari. I remember years later being a little envious of my sister who had chosen St. Francis of Assisi as her name. I always loved that saint. One of the things I really looked forward to, was getting my own missal for confirmation. It was white, quite thick and very grown-up. Not only could I follow along with the mass, it also had special readings for each day in honor of the saints. I still have it to this day and treasure it.  (Along with my plastic chalice and host from my First Communion.) On the day of my confirmation I had to wear a white robe and a red beanie. As we processed into the church I felt quite holy as this was a special day in my young life. We had been taught that when we were confirmed we would be soldiers for Christ, willing to lay down our lives for our faith. We had also been instructed that we would have to answer some questions from the bishop to see if we were prepared for the sacrament. He asked a couple of questions to the group that I thought were quite easy. I remembered how many hours I had devoted to learning all my catechism questions, and I was a little disappointed he didn't ask any harder questions. I was always the devoted student. The final act was to be a "slight blow" to the cheek administered by the bishop to show our sincere commitment to the whole soldier for Christ idea. I remember when it was my turn, I knelt down and the bishop slapped me across my cheek. It was no slight blow in my mind! It actually hurt. This might have been the beginnings of my journey away from Catholicism. Years later when I was the sponsor for my younger sister's confirmation it was all about peace and love. No slapping at all! This was a kinder, gentler church. Go figure?