One can hardly have missed the fact that there is excitement afoot with our young children! The tree that, at the beginning of Lent, held cocoons, has now erupted into a haven for butterflies! There is a banner of "The Body of Christ", made up of a lot of little people. The sign nearest to Puritas reads, "Welcome Bishop Pilla". While you may have missed the windsock that celebrates the Baptism, Confirmation and First Communion of John Lesko at the Easter Vigil, you won't be able to miss the 36 others that will stand with John's from today through the rest of the Easter Season.

You may have noticed the prayers for our sixth and seventh grade confirmation candidates as they spend this weekend in retreat, or the energetic gathering of young people in the choir loft every couple of weeks after mass. This weekend's 4:00 mass crowd will certainly notice these young people as they worship at the end of their retreat.

We hope you have noticed the increased participation of some of our young families, and we hope you will notice the new participation of the Children of Light in some familiar ministries in the weeks to come. If you have, you have been seeing our Confirmation Pilot at work!

Let me share in a bit more detail:

For the second year in a row, our youngest candidates for full initiation in the Church have been called The Children of Light. And so they are! They light up when they "get" some of the new ideas that we have been sharing with them. They lit up when they took their paper churches around the parish and were able to find a lector or usher or someone in the assembly to sign their name by the correct ministry word. They lit up when they saw that the sacrament of Reconciliation was not such a scary thing, but a time to see how much God loves them. They loved when we shared the story of the Good Shepherd as we moved our little furry sheep around the sheepfold! They lit up when they talked about coming to the Table at Communion time.

On retreat we all lit up as we watched and helped the children decorate the little person that you see on the banner. We lit up as they placed the symbols of Confirmation on their windsocks. And we lit up when we shared the bread that we all made together for our retreat day closing prayer. They lit up as they opened the cards and letters that you sent to your prayer partners and as you came into the room to share the special lunch with them.

They lit up all year long and when we are in the presence of all of that light, which we call the Light of Christ, it is simply impossible not to shine a bit ourselves. We are very fortunate to have these young people in our midst, with their families at their sides for all this time. They make us try to be better than we are because we know that they are paying attention. They shine a light on our faith because as they listen to all that we say and how we say it. They make us think a little more clearly, sing a little louder, and pray a little harder.

But the Children of Light are not the only shining light among us here. We cannot forget our sixth and seventh grade Confirmation Candidates. The energy flowing down from the choir loft has been positively contagious! Many of them didn't know each other at the start, and now they are becoming friends. They have had the fine example of Fr. Joe, Shawn and Donna Witmer, some of last year's Confirmation group, and even some parents and young people who have come forward to share the story of their own relationships and struggles.

They contemplate the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in ways that make sense to them. They pray and discuss and try to put words to how they feel and what they think. They prepare with great enthusiasm for their celebration of Confirmation at the 4:00 mass on the holy Feast of Pentecost (May 18).

Reflection on the progress of the Confirmation Pilot cannot help but give us hope. We are so happy to have Bishop Pilla here to celebrate with us this weekend, to give us an opportunity to show our gratitude for his enthusiastic support of the pilot project. We have had so many opportunities over the past two years to see the Spirit of God at work here at Ascension. This process, both with our Children of Light, as well as the transitional group of older children preparing for Confirmation brings into focus the gifts of the Spirit as they are embraced and shared by these children of God. Once again, our efforts to light the fire of faith in our children show that fire to be already lit. They are open and eager and, if we let them, they too will light a fire in the midst of us!

And…… the "US" of whom I speak is not just the team of catechists, young people or parents, or even those of us who have become prayer partners. The "US" is the whole parish. We are the ones to whom our children look for example. They pick up our joy or ambivalence. They can see just how important our faith and our practice of that faith is to us, and they take those attitudes on themselves. They can feel, even if they cannot understand, the distress that many of us feel at this very troubled time in our church, but more importantly they watch us for our reactions. They watch us as we "keep on being Church" or as we walk away. They notice if our fire is quenched or fed to become even brighter.

Their sense of belonging and commitment doesn't just come in the moment of Baptism, Confirmation or Communion, it comes in all the moments they share with the rest of the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ that includes the hurt and those who have done the hurting, the people in the pews and the ones who minister at the altar, our parents and teachers and friends, people they know and people they have never met, young people, little children, old people……ALL OF US!

There are several reasons. Some have to do with history and the larger church, others have to do with us at Ascension.

For most of Church history, confirmation happened before first communion as part of a process of initiation. Early on, the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and eucharist were celebrated in this order. Adults who were initiated into the church celebrated all three of these sacraments in the same event and in this same order. Eucharist, not confirmation, was seen to be the culmination of Christian initiation. Later centuries saw a separation in time of confirmation and eucharist from baptism, but the ordering of the sacraments remained. Only more recently in the history of the church has confirmation begun to be celebrated after first communion. This caused a kind of "identity crisis" for confirmation. If it comes after first communion, which is the culmination of Christian initiation, what does confirmation mean? The answer commonly given is that confirmation is a sacrament in which people become adult members of the Church.

In 1963 the Second Vatican Council restored the ancient practice of initiating adults. Once again baptism–>confirmation–>eucharist became the order by which adults became new Christians. This process has been called the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults). It became the starting point and the norm from which to think about these three sacraments. The Church’s revised Code of Canon Law, promulgated in 1983, reflects this approach when it says that even for those baptized as infants, confirmation ought to be celebrated before first communion, at about the age of seven.

In the past few years, local, national and international consultation about the age of confirmation has been going on. No consensus has been reached. But several dioceses in the United States have already begun the practice of confirming before first communion.

About a year and a half ago, the Ascension Pastoral Council approved a proposal which was sent to Bishop Pilla. This proposal followed four articles in the bulletin describing in more detail the situation above. It also followed consultation on the part of the Pastoral Council with interested parishioners after Sunday Mass. The proposal requested that Ascension Parish be a "pilot parish" for the reordering of the sacraments of initiation. In effect, the proposal sought to restore the practice of confirming before first communion. Recently, we asked Bishop Pilla about the status of this proposal. After a meeting with him on April 5, he authorized Ascension Parish to be a "pilot parish."

It means that over the next four years, Ascension will be "in transition" about how and when we celebrate confirmation and how we prepare for it. Beginning next year, confirmation will be celebrated for children in second grade, before first communion and at the same mass as first communion.

But we can’t forget about the children from grades three through eight who have not yet been confirmed. So in addition to preparing the second grade children, each year two grades of older children, beginning with the eighth and seventh grades, will also be prepared and confirmed. By the fourth year, all children who are beyond the second grade will have been confirmed.

The Bishop was very clear that part of this proposal was to pay attention to this group of children. Just because we are not confirming people at this age does not mean we are not paying attention to them. Youth ministry must be given attention, and ways of celebrating important events in young peoples’ lives through ritual must be developed.

No. In every age the Church attempts to celebrate its sacraments in ways that are best suited to the time and culture. History is full of examples in which an earlier practice gives way to a later one, only to be taken up again still later. The best way to think about this is that earlier practices were appropriate for their time and place. The new approach is an example of the church adopting a practice that is right for our time.

Probably for a little while. But that is part of what being a "pilot parish" is all about. We are to do our best to make this transition and to learn from our experience so that we and others may benefit from it. There will be need for ongoing education as well as a great deal of patience, commitment and cooperation on the part of all. More about this will be said in the weeks after Easter.