​Resurrection  of  the  Lord  Parish

​​​ Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Over the last several weeks, the history of conrmation has been set out as a rite following baptism and preceding First Communion.  Eucharist was a sacrament of spiritual maturity, attuned to the legal age of majority, which was considered to be fourteen years or so.  Medieval bishops were often generous, if not especially pious, in seeing to it that children were confirmed before adulthood.

A pattern more familiar to us surfaced in the Diocese of Toulon in France in 1748, where it was decreed that “children are to be confirmed only after receiving First Communion.”   This was an amazing shift in practice that undermined centuries of theology and tradition by which confirmation was seen as a bridge between font and table.  The innovation swept through France and across Europe, despite constant complaints from Rome.  French-trained bishops like Cheverus of Boston and Carroll of Baltimore, founders of the American church, established the practice here.  The order of the sacraments was thus disrupted in France and in the United States, and remained an eccentric exception to the rule until big developments in 1910.

— Rev. James Field

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