Confirmation Journal – Week 2, Period of Entrance

WEEK 2 – Rite of Entrance

The Rite of Entrance symbolizes your decision to discover more deeply the meaning of Christian faith. During the Rite of Confirmation, the bishop will extend his hands over you and all the other candidates and pray. This is known as the “laying on of hands” and reflects the church’s desire that through your confirmation you may experience an outpouring of God’s graces and gifts. Among those gifts are seven special ones that have come to be known as the Gifts of the Spirit: wisdom, understanding, right judgment, courage, knowledge, reverence, and wonder and awe in the presence of God.

Imagine the possibilities if we truly embraced and lived according to these gifts!

• Wisdom: This gift helps us to see and understand God’s plan in our lives and in the world. It helps us to say, “Aha, I finally understand.”
• Understanding: This gift helps us to untie the knots, to straighten out our lives, to deal with our problems. Understanding is letting the Word of God have room in our lives.
• Knowledge: This gift helps us to know ourselves and the world around us. It helps us to know where our faith is leading us and what our Church is all about. Knowledge is the gift that makes us smart about ourselves.
• Courage: This gift helps us to walk out into the world and feel prepared. It gives us the stick-to-it-iveness to stand up for what we believe.
• Right Judgement: This gift encourages us to talk things over so that we can make choices that let us feel comfortable with ourselves afterwards.
• Reverence: This gift helps us to see God in everything around us. It teaches us to treat our fragile world gently.
• Wonder and Awe: This gift keeps us awestruck by the power and beauty of God in our lives. Wonder and awe explode like a starburst when we let the Holy Spirit into our lives.

• Joy: a feeling of happiness deep within you that comes from God.
• Faithfulness: to patiently endure wrongs done to you, especially when they are unjust.
• Paticen: to keep our balance when we are in a hurry or angry with the pace of others.. Knowledge is the gift that makes us smart about ourselves.
• Peace: to resolve conflicts without violence; an inner sense that God is with us and our world.
• Kindness: to treat all with graciousness and goodwill; manners and etiquette are also in this mix; they show we have respect for others and look out for their good.
• Generosity: to give as much as we can without expecting return; gratitude is one of the ways we respond to the blessings we have received.
• Self-Control: to know our own limits and to exercise restraint as necessary; to have discipline is another way to describe self-control; the words “discipline” and “disciple” come from the same root word (to learn)
• Modesty: to be truthful about who we are, but not to brag or boast in order to make ourselves seem better and others less competent.
• Charity: to love those we may not know personally as God loves them; the Latin word for “charity” is caritas, which is used in reference to God’s love.
• Goodness: to be aware of the needs of others and to choose to do the right thing.
• Chastity: to abstain from sexual intimacy until married and even when married to respect one another’s sexuality.
• Gentleness: to respect self and others as children of God, to treat one another with care and concern