Marta Rocha thought that she might never be able to receive the sacrament of confirmation. “The lack of paperwork I had, it was hard. I moved from Portugal when I was young; I never got confirmed as a child,” she said.
But thanks to the adult confirmation program at St. Patrick Church in Fredericksburg and the encouragement of parochial vicar Father William B. Schierer, Rocha and her daughter, Summer Rocha-Araujo, finally received the opportunity to complete their sacraments of initiation.
“I was a cradle Catholic, but I left the practice for the longest time, and only last February did I start (again). I figured that I wanted a deeper connection with the Lord,” Rocha-Araujo said.
Bishop Michael F. Burbidge and Bishop Emeritus Paul S. Loverde confirmed more than 250 teens and adults at Mass at Nativity Catholic Church in Burke May 19. Family and friends filled the pews and lined the walls in the side aisles and the narthex. The confirmation candidates, or confirmandi, had completed adult confirmation programs at parishes across the diocese.
In his homily, Bishop Burbidge said that it was fitting that the confirmandi receive the sacrament of confirmation on Pentecost, the birthday of the church. “Dear candidates, all of you to be confirmed on this joyful day have varied stories to tell as it relates to your faith journey. Yet, you all share some things in common: You are here at this particular time in your life to be confirmed and fully initiated into the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church as part of God’s divine plan for you,” he said. “You leave church looking externally the same but, in reality, you will become a radically new creation in Christ Jesus.”
During the rite of confirmation, the confirmandi stood and affirmed their baptismal promises. Bishop Burbidge then extended his hands over the confirmandi: “Dearly beloved, let us pray to God the almighty Father, for these, his adopted sons and daughters, already born again to eternal life in baptism, that he will graciously pour out the Holy Spirit upon them to confirm them with his abundant gifts, and through his anointing conform them more fully to Christ, the Son of God,” he prayed.
The confirmandi then lined up with their confirmation sponsors as Bishop Burbidge and Bishop Loverde anointed their foreheads with sacred chrism. Following Mass, family and friends celebrated the newly confirmed at a reception.
Lawrence Stanley, a parishioner of Queen of Apostles Church in Alexandria, said that he originally received the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. Last year, however, he said he felt the Holy Spirit inviting him to receive confirmation. He said that now he feels, “true fulfillment, a closer call to God (as) one of God’s servants.”
The adult confirmation program is not to be confused with the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, said Father Edward J. Bresnahan, parochial vicar of Nativity. “A lot of people, when they think of RCIA, they think of people converting to the Catholic Church. They think of people who had not received sacraments and had not been received into the church in a formal way of doing that.”
Instead, the adult confirmation program “is for specifically people who have never completed their rites of initiation. They were baptized Catholic; they were already part of the church,” Father Bresnahan said. “But sometimes for whatever reason — sometimes it’s by personal choice, but sometimes it’s by their state in life — they missed out on confirmation.”
Every parish’s adult confirmation program varies in length, but for Nativity, the program runs five weeks, where participants meet weekly with Father Bresnahan. The adult confirmation program is similar to the parish eighth grade confirmation program in that, “You want to emphasize to both groups what confirmation does. And confirmation confirms us as a disciple of Christ,” he said.
“Confirmation confirms in our hearts what the Spirit has called us to do, which is to be a faithful disciple of him, and to share him with others in whatever our state in life is.”
Find out more
To find an adult confirmation program near you, go to arlingtondiocese.org/adultconfirmation.
