From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

Someone once said that Confirmation was a Sacrament in search of a theology. This is because Baptism is our full immersion into the life of Christ and Communion is our ongoing participation in that life. The other Sacraments, like Confession, also play a role in that lifelong deepening of our faith.

In these Sacraments, God does something. Bread is changed and water becomes a source of new life. There’s always been a bit of confusion about what God does in Confirmation. If we’re restored, forgiven, and renewed by Baptism and Communion then what is it that we look for God to do in Confirmation?

On Sunday, January 29, we have 30 people being confirmed or received into the Episcopal Church. The bishop will be at Saint Philip’s and will lay hands on each of them—as is the requirement for Confirmation in the Episcopal Church.

Many did the same for the Bishop when she was consecrated. A gathering of bishops laid hands on her praying for the Holy Spirit to come down.

When people are confirmed into the Church they have hands laid on them that have been consecrated by a bishop, who had the same done for them, and the same before that. This chain of the sharing of the ministry of Christ goes back to the earliest days of the Church. It has the lofty name “Apostolic Succession.”

In technical terms, this succession is the chain of bishops who have been ordained going back to the first bishops. It’s a bit like a family tree. We can look at the lineage of each Church and each diocese and see who ordained them long back into our history.

The rite of Confirmation is not about looking back toward history alone though. It is about the reality of God’s saving power, shared through the life of the Church, coming into our own day. It is about a chain of bishops who consecrated kings, prayed for dying queens, were martyred and went missing, suffered bravely and endured all things. It is about a chain of living love that has bound us together from one generation to another—from one set of hands to another.

This Apostolic Succession is a living, vibrant, breathing chain whose links are us, the faithful, who from age to age have professed our faith and accepted the calling to be a baptized Kingdom people.

When God came to Mary, he did not demand she bear Christ. It took her “Yes” to set in motion the salvation of the world. Confirmation is our “yes.” It is our choice to bear Christ for the world. It is the addition of our one small voice to the countless ones that have gone before. That faithful chorus of “yesses” rings out from one era to another. It is a ragged band of noble poverty. It is a noble throng of beggars who ask God to do something we cannot do for ourselves—to bind our voice to those of every age who have said, “yes” to God.

We come to God with nothing but our voice in this Sacrament. Our voice and our hands. Hands are laid on our heads—hands that could have been laid on Constantine’s or Catherine the Great’s. Hands that could have been laid on Saint Jerome or Saint George. Hands that could have been laid on any one or all of the countless number of humble men and women whose name and faith is known to God alone.

Those hands confirm that it is our will to lose our voice in the great “yes” of history—and to find it here, just now, as one more link is added to the chain of faithful hope and joyful obedience—and one more person chooses, confirms their longing, to bear Christ for the world.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert