What is the Sacrament of Confirmation?
What is the Sacrament of Confirmation?The Sacrament of Confirmation first confers an indelible spiritual mark
Like Baptism which it completes, Confirmation is given only once, for it too imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark, the “character,” which is the sign that Jesus Christ has marked a Christian with the seal of his Spirit by clothing him with power from on high so that he may be his witness.
Plus
From this fact, Confirmation brings an increase and deepening of baptismal grace:
- it roots us more deeply in the divine filiation which makes us cry, “Abba! Father!”;117
- it unites us more firmly to Christ;
- it increases the gifts of the Holy Spirit in us;
- it renders our bond with the Church more perfect;118
- it gives us a special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ, to confess the name of Christ boldly, and never to be ashamed of the Cross:119
It releases an outpouring of the Holy Spirit
It is evident from its celebration that the effect of the sacrament of Confirmation is the special outpouring of the Holy Spirit as once granted to the apostles on the day of Pentecost.
It perfects the common priesthood of the faithful
This “character” perfects the common priesthood of the faithful, received in Baptism, and “the confirmed person receives the power to profess faith in Christ publicly and as it were officially.
From: the Vatican website: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a2.htm
And the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
So, a person who has received the sacrament of Confirmation has been marked to gain the power necessary to experience a greater love our Lord, to share in the responsibilities of the Church to “evangelize all nations” and to defend Our Lord and His Church. He or she has been armed with the gift of the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish this inner growth and accomplishments. It is, among other things, an accolade as for the knights of old.
