What Teaching Confirmation is Teaching Me

This fall, thanks in no small part to Clare's Miraculous Medal ("Mawee Mehdal") that she wore to the new parishioner brunch at our parish (true story--thanks, Grandma!), we got recruited to help teach confirmation this winter.

For three fast and furious months, we host a group of high school sophomores in our home each Sunday evening, hashing out the faith, drinking cocoa, and eating baked goods. More and more, thankfully, we are laughing and having fun along the way. Hopefully, they are opening their hearts to the workings of the Holy Spirit in the process. Definitely, they are seeing a glimpse of family life, with Clare dancing through the living room and Peter showing off his chill and happy baby skills.

Clare looooooves the "Confirmation girls" and likes showing off for them.

You know that adage about learning things by teaching them? Yep, that is definitely happening. I've learned so much about the Sacrament, about the book of Acts, about our faith. Most importantly, though, it is teaching me about how awesome the Holy Spirit it. More than ever, I find myself open to the workings of the Holy Spirit.

Teaching these kids has reinvigorated my faith.
Since Clare was born, I have often found myself missing the days when I served the Church in more obvious ways. I especially miss serving as a Mass coordinator and Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion at the parish where Charles and I met. I was so close to the liturgy, and a lively faith was the direct result of that. Serving the church through diapers and PBJ is just not the same. Motherhood, is, of course, a terribly important vocation. And marriage is a really, really important Vocation. But I've inadvertently found my faith muscles growing flabby.

Now, for 10 weeks at least, I'm reading -- and since I have to teach what I'm reading, I'm reading it that much more closely -- and thinking and lesson planning.

I feel intellectually invigorated. A lively faith is bubbling back up from under the surface. 

The last two weeks, we've read and discussed excerpts from Pope Francis' encyclical "Joy of the Gospel," which I had never gotten around to when it was released, and was doubly renewed.

At the end of the day, maybe I'm helping teach our "Confirmation Kids" a little something, but really, it's the Holy Spirit working in and through me that's making all the difference. For me, and, I can only pray, for them.

Veni, Sancte Spiritus.