I gave this talk to students preparing for the sacrament of confirmation and their parents at St. Joseph Church, Somers Point, NJ in Fall 2007.
Is grace real?
Will Confirmation make a difference in the lives of the students here tonight?
One of the most important questions of our time is whether religion is relevant. Religion students are sometimes required to memorize the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Are they only words, or is there power behind them? The words themselves come from Isaiah 11:2-3, which speaks about the coming Messiah:
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
What is significant about these verses is that the prophet Isaiah foresees these gifts in the Messiah, in Jesus Christ. So the gifts of the Spirit are first and foremost in him. Everyone baptized into Christ shares these gifts. We find their most marvelous use in the saints. I want to share with you a story about each of the gifts and a saint known for demonstrating the power behind the words.
We begin in FRANCE, 1431. A 19-year-old girl is on trial for witchcraft. She was captured by the English after leading a stunning series of French victories in the Hundred Years War. The English have paid a court of the Inquisition to prove that the girl is a witch, thus attributing her victories to the devil. Her judges decide to trap her with a deceptively simple question: Are you in the state of grace? If she answers yes, she will be guilty of presumption. If she answers no, she will be vulnerable to charges of witchcraft. Perhaps she paused in this moment to recall the promise of Christ in the Gospels: "You are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute." Joan of Arc answered her judges: "If I am not in the state of grace, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there." A peasant girl evaded the trap set by learned judges and her immortal answer today concludes the chapter on grace in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The gift of wisdom!
INDIA, 1946. A young nun is traveling by train when Jesus speaks to her, "Come be my light." He reveals his pain at the neglect of the poor, his sorrow at their ignorance of him, and his desire for their love. Two years later, Mother Teresa of Calcutta puts on the white, blue-bordered sari now known throughout the world for service to the poorest of the poor. She preaches by word and action the simple message of the Gospel as she herself beautifully explained it: "God still loves the world and He sends you and me to be his love and his compassion to the poor."
The gift of understanding!
FRANCE, 1856. A priest, intending to take credit for her work, orders an old nun to hide the fact that she founded the Little Sisters of the Poor. She is put away to live with the postulants. Obedient, she never reveals the truth of her past, but she does share the experience of her old age. She advises the postulants: "Go and find Jesus in the chapel when your strength and patience are giving out, when you feel lonely and helpless." "Refuse God nothing." "God is our Father, let us put our trust in him."
One day, the priest and his council are divided on the matter of accepting a large donation. If they accept it, the interest on the donation would reduce the sisters' need to beg on behalf of the poor. Someone suggests that Sister Jeanne Jugan be called from obscurity to share her opinion. In those years when earthly honors abandoned her, she learned total dependence on God. She therefore advises the council to reject the offer. Today, her order remains true to its name: the Little Sisters of the Poor still beg for alms with and for the poor.The gift of counsel!
POLAND, 1941. A prisoner escapes from Auschwitz. In reprisal, the Nazi guards choose ten prisoners for execution. One of them is a married man with young children. Another prisoner, Father Maximilian Kolbe, volunteers to take his place. He is thrown into a starvation chamber where he is the last to die, remarkably surviving for two weeks until his guards finally kill him by lethal injection. True image of the first priest, Jesus Christ, this priest laid down his life for another.
The gift of courage!
ITALY, 1273. A Dominican friar is in spiritual ecstasy at Mass. Afterwards, he tells his fellow friar, "I can write no more. Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value." Three months later, he dies. In his less than fifty years of life, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote more than sixty works. His earliest biographers reported that he could dictate different works to several scribes simultaneously. His Summa Theologica is considered a primary source for Catholic theology. A Protestant Reformer remarked: "Take away Thomas and I will destroy the Church." Pope Leo XIII, who called Thomas "the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith," responded to Luther's disciple: "The hope was vain, but the testimony has its value."
The gift of knowledge!
We return for the last time to FRANCE, 1897. A 24-year-old nun dies from tuberculosis, surrounded by the sisters of her order. In her short life, she struggled to find holiness. Unlike tonight's other saints, she fought no battles, founded no religious orders, wrote no books of theology. While meditating upon the letters of St. Paul, she came to a great conclusion. Heroic deeds were not necessary to holiness, rather only love counted. She called love the "Little Way" to heaven because even the simplest Christians could practice it. Shortly before her death, Sister Therese of the Child Jesus wrote in her journal:
When I looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I found myself in none of the members which Saint Paul described.... Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more.... Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love.... In the heart of the Church, I will be love!"
The gift of piety!
The last story is from the very beginning in JERUSALEM, 33 AD. The Ascension of Christ is a recent memory and the new Christian faith is spreading through Jerusalem and all of Israel. But there is opposition. The high priest and the council have warned, threatened, arrested, and imprisoned the apostles for preaching about Jesus. After a miracle releases them from prison, they are once again dragged before the religious leaders in the Temple. "We strictly charged you," the high priest says, "not to teach in the name of Christ, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching." St. Peter boldly answered, "We must obey God rather than men." These simple words demonstrated that Peter's fear - the fear which initially led him to deny Christ - was finally lifted. God must be honored above all, he concluded, even in the face of persecution. Now he would begin to free to the entire world from fear, so that it, too, could honor God above all other things.
The gift of the fear of God!
Seven saints, seven moments in the history of the Church, seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. I have shared with you the extraordinary stories of the past, but the Christian saga continues today. Difficult times are ahead and we will each have our own moments when our Christian witness will require sacrifice. Think only of the last time you were in a situation where evil was being spoken or committed. Maybe you felt awkward, uncomfortable, ashamed, or even appalled. Remember the words of Christ: "Without me you can do nothing." When you are surrounded by evil, when you are pressured to join it, summon the gifts of the Spirit so that you can speak out boldly in the name of Christ. You will then being telling your own stories.
My message tonight is simple: God exists. He loves us. Two thousand years ago, he sent his only Son into the world to die for our sins. Today, he sends his Spirit into each one of us so that we can continue the most important mission of all time: the salvation of the whole world. This is the sacred duty of every Christian. In a special way, it will soon be the duty of the candidates for Confirmation with us tonight. May Jesus Christ be praised in his saints and in us.