What if Confirmation isn’t just about the church’s future, but the world’s? Bishop Hughes reflects on how young people’s faith offers hope for future leaders and decision-makers—and how engaging them in conversations about faith can renew our own faith right now. (Time: 4:38.)
Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark, and Eastertide has begun. One of the wonderful things about our church is we have a great celebration of Christ’s resurrection on Easter, singing beautiful hymns, saying prayers together, hearing sermons that are focused on hope and joy, and we leave with this knowledge that we are forever connected to God in a special way, because of Jesus’s time here on this earth with us, for his sacrificial giving of his life and his resurrecting to heaven and the promises to always be with us, within us and about us. And so we don’t just stop on one day of Easter, thinking about that, we continue for another 50 days.
I’ve been thinking too because of these 50 days, and right as they began, not even six or seven days after Easter, I was on retreat with our Confirmands, with a group of them from the diocese. I wish every single person who was going to be confirmed was able to go, but it’s all about timing and is it a Saturday that people can make it. I also wish every single person of the diocese could hear these young people who are about to affirm their faith, in front of their bishop, in front of their priest, in front of their family, in front of God – as we used to say growing up, in front of God and everybody – they’re going to stand in the church and affirm their faith. The faith that someone claimed for them as an infant, and now here they are, 13, 14, 15, 16 years old, and some adults who will be doing the same, claiming that faith for themselves.
When they talk about why they want to be confirmed, when they talk about what they’re hoping for, it is an inspiring thing. Every year, it leaves me feeling excited, not only for their lives and how their faith is going to unfold over the years, but it excites me for the whole wide world. Often people will point at young people or people who are being confirmed and say, “That’s the future of the church.” Let’s expand our vision. It’s not the future of the church alone, it’s the future of the whole wide world. Imagine all these people when they hit their 20s and their 30s, and they are the ones making the decisions in all of the industries. They are the ones figuring out how we govern ourselves. They are the ones who are on the forefront of decision making and with influence. And these are people who say right now that the most important thing to them is to be an adult in their church, to be part of the decision-making process, to have a role in their church that is not the role of a child simply receiving Sunday school, but they have things to give. And then, as importantly, and I would say even more importantly, almost every single one of them expressed a desire to be confirmed because they thought it would deepen their faith. As young person after young person said to me, “I just want to know God better. I want to be closer to God, and I think confirmation will help me with that.”
I know their confirmation prep has helped all of them with that, and then certainly it’s our responsibility as people in the church who love them and care about their future – and care about the future of the whole world, not just the future of the church – it’s our responsibility to nurture that in them. To not let it dry up and die on the vine, to not let them get embarrassed by questions that they ask about faith or feel like they cannot ask us about anything. The incredible irony too, when we support them in their faith is it rekindles something in our own faith. We remember those very fresh moments where we had a true sense of God’s leading, God’s presence, what God was asking us to do, and a desire to go deeper in the faith.
I think some of that comes up for all of us every year in Lent, and I hope that it does not diminish for you in Eastertide. But one way I can tell you for certain that will help to fan those flames: speak to the people in your church who are going to be confirmed. They will inspire you, and your getting to hear that story is a way to support them in growing their faith.
It’s going to be a beautiful Eastertide, especially when we’re supporting each other in our faithfulness.
