Dear friends in Christ,
June is the month when many graduates celebrate the completion of their education. Whether they are going on to another level of education or starting a job, graduates observe this transition as a milestone in their lives. A sense of achievement and completion is an important part of graduating. Whatever the challenges might have been, graduation marks a point in time when we look back in order to look forward. We often have a moment of realizing that we’ve matured and grown; that we’ve changed because of what we’ve learned.
Confirmation, in The Episcopal Church, is a kind of graduation too. Although we don’t ever “graduate” from our Baptism, we do mature in our Baptism. We strive to live into our Baptismal Covenant, and at the time of Confirmation, we mark, through ritual, our decision to move deeper into the journey of our faith. Catechism is a form of oral instruction intended to help those preparing for Confirmation to understand what it means to take this next step in our faith journey. While we may understand graduation as a ritual marking completion, Confirmation is a ritual marking the continuation of our faith formation and our intention about the way our life will change because of Jesus. It marks a commitment to the cycle of maturing in faith - a lifelong process of learning, growing, changing, and learning.
The cyclical pattern of the Christian life does not lend itself to linear ways of thinking about learning and changing. When we commit ourselves to mature in our faith, we are entering into an ongoing relationship with God, understood in Jesus Christ. This relationship has no end. Even in death, we cannot claim any kind of graduation because our journey extends into life beyond this one. There is something very reassuring about knowing that we will never become too smart or mature for God. And God never tires of us in our ignorance, hubris, or petty ways. Deserving or not, God’s grace and love showers upon us in unending abundance.
Congratulations to all the graduates, and blessings to all the Confirmed. May your life be rich with temporal milestones illumined by a life in Christ that is forever deepening and unfolding.
With peace and in Christ,
+Diana
