This Post Brought to You by the Word "Fortnight"

[alixtii]

So I'm a fortnight away from my confirmation, now. Still not a big deal since it's still the case that I made my baptismal vows as an adult, but I find myself looking forward to it nonetheless. I didn't get to meet the bishop the last time he celebrated a mass at our church; this time, presumably, I will.

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[glacierscout.livejournal.com]

Just a story to tell you what "not a big deal" an adult Confirmation can be.

I was brought up Roman Catholic, and was confirmed in that church. I ran into th Episcopal Church while I was in college (actually grad school), and decided to officially join the church thirty years ago, in the late fall of 1978.

There were only three of us in the confirmation class, and all three of us wereconverts from the RC church, so all three of us were merely going to be received. The preparation sessions were appropriately low key.

On the day of the confirmation, our bishop got up to give his sermon, and he spoke about what had just transpired at the Lambeth Conference. he claimed that the important work that was being done was not what took place in the main sessions where reesolutions were argued and debated, but in the small Bible study groups. In his group was a Northern Irish bishop, who was very moody and withdrawn for the first half of the sessions. Finally, he shared with his fellow bishops that he was quiet because he was in mourning.

It seems that a month earlier, he had shown up to confirm a large number of young people in a small town in Northern Ireland. His custom was to hold a dinner party not with the current group of confirmands, but with the group that had been confirmed the previous year. At the dinner, the young people would describe to him and to the others what being an adult in the church meant to them. Then, the past confirmands would line up, greet and talk to the bishop personally, and some would give him a small, token gift.

One young man, named Freddie did not say anything at the dinner, and contrived to be the last one in line to personally greet the bishop. When he finally came forward, he handed the bishop a large, heavy package, and said "Please take this away from me - it's a gun." he described how he had long been a member of a Loyalist resistance group that fought the IRA, and now that he was sixteen, he had been asked to become a full member. The price of admission was to kill a Catholic, and the group gave him the gun to carry out the killing. Freddie said that he had reflected on that order, and on what it meant to be a confirmed Christian, and decided that he just could not do it.

Two weeks later, the bishop returned to the same church - to bury Freddie. When he refused to kill a Catholic, the resistance group knew he couldn't be trusted, and they killed Freddie themselves as a "traitor".

Our bishop then concluded that each of us needed to be as certain in our faith as Freddie was in order to be confirmed. The three of us went forward as a very chastened, very humbled group.