Warm Our Hearts, Benumbed and Chill

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.

Prayer to the Holy Ghost

Come, O Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy Faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love.

V. Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created.

__*R. *__And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth. Let us pray.

O God, who hast taught the hearts of the faithful, by the light of the Holy Spirit, grant that by the gift of the same Spirit we may be always truly wise and ever rejoice in His consolation. Through Christ our Lord.

R. Amen.

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