There is no one for whom Adoration is a bad fit. Shy? You don’t have to even make eye contact with anyone. Love ritual and tradition? Bring a rosary or say the Liturgy of the Hours. Prefer to free-form it? Go for it. Not sure what your relationship with God is or is supposed to be? Just be there. Not in a state of grace? Be with the Lord so you can hear Him calling you home. Have a hard time sitting still? Make it a short visit. Like doing things in community with others? There is perpetual adoration going on all over the world all the time. Like private, individual worship? It’s just you and Him.
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I think you are spot on in regard to Eucharistic Adoration for Confirmation candidates – or for any one of us.
Adoration opens us to focus us specifically on Jesus, with no distractions. If we want to remain silent, and simply listen to the candles crackle, it clears our minds and permits Our Lord to enter our hearts. If we want to pray a rosary or empty our souls, with all our worries and problems, it is ideal. I am convinced the most direct contact with Jesus, outside of Communion, is through Eucharistic Adoration.
I am also convinced of the wisdom of the timing of Confirmation to be around the 7th or 8th Grade (13 or 14 years old), as it is in my Diocese. This is the age when kids are facing high school. Like the Bar Mitzvah ceremony for Jewish boys, it welcomes our children to full responsibility for their Faith as they are on the edge of adulthood, and impresses on them their duties as adult Catholics, as well as the rewards. Which is *exactly* what they need to hear and understand at that age. The selection of a personal patron saint is also very important and encouraging to the candidates, and allows them to have a say in who they want to model their lives on, in imitation of Jesus.
I am the Godmother to 3 lovely young ladies. When it was time for Nicole’s Confirmation, she asked me to be her sponsor. I went to Confirmation classes with her at her parish. The DRE went to a great deal of trouble to reinforce the responsibilities of their upcoming Sacrament, and made it fun. We would all attend Saturday vigil Mass together, and then have a simple supper (pizza, soup, or something on those lines) and lessons together. They had homework, which was pertinent and very helpful. We studied the saints and blesseds in order for the candidates to find inspiration – such as Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, St. Joseph, St. Edith Stein, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and so many others. And we discussed what it means to be a mature and active Catholic in our parishes and in secular life. Nicole and I *both* loved our classes.
Thank you, dear Simcha, for bringing up this very timely topic, and God bless *all* Confirmation candidates and their sponsors – you are making a difference to Jesus by your positive actions in defense of your Faith!
If the whole argument is that you cannot impose service hours on the confirmandi and their families (because some would be resentful and some would lie about having completed the hours), I am not sure how eucharistic adoration could be forced on people… It seems contradictory to me.
Thankfully where we live there is none of this, the confirmandi only take catechism classes and are encouraged to get involved in service and develop a personal prayer life but nobody is logging hours.
I specifically said that it shouldn’t be required.
Oh sorry! Then I agree 100%. (I read your post while nursing the baby and probably dozed off… )
I don’t go to Eucharistic Adoration anymore. However I do pray the Rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy every day.
I often wish the Roman Rite would go back to how the Eastern Catholic Church does sacraments–when a baby is baptized, they receive Baptism, Confirmation, and their First Eucharist, all in one fell swoop, the way the early Christians, it is reckoned, did it. We were attending the Byzantine Rite for a while and it was so lovely. No hoops for the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. (Sadly, the Byzantine chapel we were attending was so tiny that it no longer has a priest assigned to it.) I am currently doing home preparation with my youngest for his Holy Communion next year, and I am DREADING the “Jesus Retreat” that I know is waiting for me. I am very thankful they let us do home preparation, this is the only parish in our whole town that does, but the very words “Jesus Retreat” make me want to retreat back into my cave and hide.
Oh, I forgot to relate my experience of service hours. I really wanted to volunteer at the local hospital, as a candy striper, as they called them back then, or as a admissions assistant. My dad this is, and I thought it would be a great opportunity. I was discerning whether to go into the healthcare profession someday. Well, somehow my mom ended up telling them I was “great with kids” (i.e. I babysat every weekend for spending money) so they put me in the onsite daycare. She kept pointing out that it was a great opportunity to ‘get my foot in the door’ so they would hire me once I was of employable age. (which is I’m sure what they have in mind when they call them ‘service hours’)
I…did not like it. I’m sure i learned valuable lessons (tie your hair back lest you want a toddler using your waist-length hair to climb up your back while yelling “NO! NO! NO!”, how to bleach the toys so as to lessen the chance of the kids spreading germs (HA)), but in general I look back at that time and am rather resentful. Adoration would have been much, much better for me spiritually; my parents were, at best, nominal Catholics, we had no family prayer life and pretty much showed up at Mass out of fear of What Father John Would Think if we weren’t there. The idea of having a personal relationship with Jesus was never brought up, not in CCD, at home, or later at my Catholic high school. Sad.
I like it!
I get the service requirement, as you said, though I prefer the way one local parish does it as opposed to the “number of hours”: they require candidates to do some type of service for the community, for the parish, and for their own family. But I agree with you that adoration time is the more valuable thing.