Scenes from Life: The Confirmation

Happy February, and welcome to another installment of Scenes from Life!

This month I'm featuring Denise from Tulips and Togas. I've been reading Denise's blog since she started writing in January 2011 and I think it's safe to say I've never missed a post. Denise's life fascinates me. She's well-educated and articulate, interesting, independent, and successful in her career. She writes funny posts about what it's like to start dating in your early thirties, brutally honest posts about what it's like to grow up with a rare, craniofacial deformity, and inspiring posts about what it's like to push your limits. Whether that means conquering stage fright through public speaking or choking down a few bites of rice pudding, Denise is always an inspiration.

So, without further ado, I give you:    

The Confirmation

“Mom, weren’t you ever sad when I was born?  Weren’t you angry?  Didn’t you ever ask God why?”

They were questions that I asked time and again.  When the teasing was too nasty, when the stares became too intense, when looking different got too hard, when life seemed too unfair.  I would retreat to my mother’s lap – even when I was much too big and much too old to curl up comfortably – I would lean my head against her shoulder and I would ask those questions.  And her response was always the same.

“No,” she said.  “I got the little girl that I always wanted.  And I had my faith.”
  
When I was little, I thought my mother had to say that because she was my mom.  And Catholic.
    

************

We were not a devoutly religious family but we were good Catholics.  Our Bible was tucked away in the closet – we received the Word of the Lord from the priest at Mass; we observed Lenten Fridays by eating fish or pizza (mostly pizza); my brother and I – proud public school kids – received our religious education for an hour every Monday afternoon at CCD, an acronym that I am sure has a proper definition but which is known, maybe universally but at least on the East Coast, as Central City Dump; and we received the sacraments that every good Catholic receives as they grow up– Baptism, First Reconciliation, First Holy Communion, and Confirmation.

I was ten to my brother’s 13 when he was confirmed, took on a third name, and became an “adult” member of the Catholic Church.  The Catholic Church does ceremony very well.  It is pomp, it is circumstance, it is theater, it is beautiful.  My brother’s confirmation ceremony was all of that.  And more.

On the night of his confirmation, my parents and I sat in the last pew in our parish church waiting for the ceremony to start.  The instruments began to play, the choir began to sing, and the procession of young, eager confirmands began.  We watched as my brother and the rest of the CCD kids, at last integrated with the Catholic school kids, resplendent in their long red gowns and white shawl things that weren’t really shawl things but I don’t know how else to describe them, filed past us.  The procession walked up the center aisle, genuflected before the altar, and then entered the pews where they were to sit.

The music changed ever so slightly and the congregation rose to its feet to welcome the second procession into the church.  Altar boys carrying the processional cross, candles, and the Gospels, led the priests and bishop, resplendent in their own long, beautiful vestments, past the pews.  It was Catholic theater at its best – rich in solemnity and beauty and religious tradition.  It was all going according to script…until it wasn’t.  The bishop, bringing up the rear, suddenly stopped at the pew where my family was sitting.  At the spot where I was sitting.  And since the bishop stopped, the rest of the procession stopped.  And since the procession stopped, everyone turned to stare.  And wasn’t that just great?

I looked at my mother who was as confused as I was.  I think there were quiet murmurings as I stood up a little straighter trying to understand what was going on.  I was a CCD kid after all and they didn’t teach us about this kind of stuff.  The bishop smiled at me, I remember that his face was old but kind; he blessed me with the sign of the Cross; then he said, “Everything will be alright.”

Then he returned to script and the procession continued on towards the front of the church, towards the eager confirmands, and towards the altar from where that kind bishop would deliver the Word of the Lord to us. 

That night, my brother and the rest of the confirmands were received into the Catholic Church.  

That night, I began to understand that religion and faith aren’t the same thing at all.  

But it would be years before I became a believer.  

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