By Annie-Rose Keith
Connecting Liturgy and Life
Editor’s note: For 2026, the weekly “Connecting Faith and Life” column has been renamed “Connecting Liturgy and Life.” The column consists of reflections on Part Two of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), which focuses on the Liturgy and the Sacraments.
cf. CCC 1285-1289; 1290-1296
We receive the Sacrament of Confirmation so that we may become more like the person of Jesus Christ. We are also confirmed to be equipped to go out and make disciples of all nations. In our diocese, we’re moving from 10th grade to fifth grade Confirmation. How is a fifth grader supposed to “go out” and make disciples of all nations?
There are two ways. The first, by remembering (and reminding their parents) that they are baptized. Baptism and Confirmation, along with the Eucharist, constitute the Sacraments of Initiation. Confirmation completes our baptismal grace, and by allowing ourselves the opportunity to freely receive the strengthening that comes from Confirmation, we are “more perfectly bound to the Church and are enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1285). It’s crucial to remember and be reminded that Confirmation is not graduation from a life of faith, or from going to Mass, because graces from God can only grow on fertile soil. If that soil isn’t tended, how can the seed of faith planted during a child’s sacramental and spiritual formation flourish? This is even more important to remember as fifth graders because Confirmation will be a crucial opportunity to foster a desire to make their parish and their world the best it can possibly be for the glory of God. Since they can’t drive, their parents are more compelled to get involved with their life of faith, too.
Baptism opens the doors to heaven. The doors to heaven are open to us because Christ died for us and we are baptized, but we actively choose the path to heaven daily. God WANTS us to freely choose to follow him each and every day. Sure, he could make us follow him, but that’s not a loving relationship; that’s a dictatorship, and that’s not who God is. Through Confirmation, we are being more closely formed to the person of Jesus, whose whole life and whole mission was “carried out in total communion with the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1286). The same Holy Spirit is given to us at our baptisms and strengthened by the laying on of hands and anointing with sacred chrism (CCC 1288, 1290).
There is a temptation after our baptism, and especially after Confirmation, to live our faith as a static relationship that’s just between you and God. Static, here, meaning you don’t live your faith out in order to bring the light of Christ, the hope that we have in Jesus, and the peace that comes from following God to others who might not have experienced it or that might not be living with it. This is not what the church calls us to do — the Church was entrusted with the mission of Jesus and calls us to live a life of Missionary Discipleship. This means that we recognize that every disciple is a gift from God to the world, and that we are called to make a gift of our lives to others in order to spread the good news of Christ’s Resurrection.
This brings us to the second way that a fifth grader can go and make disciples. They must remember and be reminded that their life is a gift and the gifts they were given at their baptism are meant to be shared. In “Evangelium Vitae,” St. John Paul the Great wrote that human life is “a gift by which God shares something of himself with his creature.” In “Caritas in Veritate,” Pope Benedict XVI wrote that life is a gift received, not a product we control. We can control the amount of gas we put in our car, but if we look at our lives and the lives of those around us as a gift, and then we live in a relationship with God; if we openly receive the graces of God given to us through the sacraments, through our Mass — think of how this world would be. If we looked at each other and ourselves as the gifts that we are, made by a God who loves us beyond what we can fathom, and if we looked at others in the same way … how would this world look?