Confirmation

Confirmation went very well last night. I gave myself two hours to putter around and set everything up, and except for our back-up microphone also cutting out on the bishop, it was a good night. The kids looked great, knew their stuff and made me very proud. The pastor conveyed to me at the end of the night that the bishop thought it was good, so I took that as high praise coming from the bishop via the boss.

I thought the bishop used a couple of good analogies in his homily which I intend to steal for next year -- after all, that's what catechists do: listen to sermons and steal the good bits.

He said that none of us deserve the Holy Spirit, and spoke about a gift as being not something we earn, like a paycheque, but a completely undeserved, unexpected, highly generous gift, as if he gave us all a large sum of money for every week for the rest of our lives -- that kind of amazing gift. Despite this, he went on to talk about the gift recipients as needing to be ready to receive the gift, using an analogy of a football team not having a receiver and asking a stadium full of people if someone could just step up, unprepared, and fill the role for them. That clearly wouldn't work too well, so he mentioned them studying, praying, participating in a retreat, going to reconciliation, doing community service, and so on as being ways they prepared themselves to be in excellent spiritual shape to be capable of receiving the gift.

I was very impressed with his speaking and the fact he handled his own crozier and mitre so the altar servers could "relax". The MC moved around and directed the servers and concelebrants seamlessly and I was so grateful to him for his help.

Today I'm utterly exhausted, coming down off the adrenaline I had pumping through my veins as I ran around getting everything set up and taken down after Mass yesterday. I feel another nap coming on.