I have been taught that the object and effect of this sacrament was to make me
strong, that this strengthening of me was to be achieved by the abiding
Presence of the Holy Spirit, and that this abiding Presence was to continue for
the whole of my lifetime. As the need endures, so must the remedy endure.
This sacrament, therefore, is tremendously alive and I should not regard it, as I
may have done in the past, as though it were some childish thing that had to
be got over while I am young. Do I not find sometimes that people look on it
much as they look on the measles as a normal heritage of children? Surely, in
my fuller age, the need of divine strength increases rather than diminishes.
As a child, I probably thought that I was naughty only because I was a child,
but that when I grew up I supposed that I would find life easier. Instead, I
discovered that I look back upon my childhood as the innocent time of my life
and look upon my older years as years of wrongdoing. Though, perhaps I
clung to the salve of conscience that a man might be a little wild in youth, but
he had time to become a saint in his old age. Thus, it is always yesterday or
tomorrow, never today. However, Confirmation suddenly reminds me that it
is now that God calls, and now that the Holy Ghost makes appeal to me to
remember His presence and to make use of it.
Do I, indeed, think of that Presence in my times of stress? In the struggles of
temptation, do I sufficiently have recourse to that divine Helper given me?
Do the Sevenfold Gifts really signify anything practical to me? Let me turn in
devotion to the Holy Spirit, recite the hymns to Him, and be conscious always
of the resident force pent up in my soul.
