Life After Confirmation:

Confirmation is not a graduation from Church or from your faith, but rather Confirmation completes your Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation), making a full member of the Catholic Church.

Confirmation is actually just the beginning of your life of discipleship. Now that you have been sealed with gifts of the Holy Spirit, you have the mission to spread and defend the faith and to seek to grow closer to Christ every day.

• To sum it up, you are called to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ

Read Acts 2:42: "They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers."

• • We can look to the life of the early disciples to learn what we need to do to live out our discipleship everyday.
  • There are four habits that disciples have: Prayer, Scripture, Sacraments, and Community.

Prayer

• Prayer is not a part of your relationship with God- it is your relationship with God
  • You cannot have a relationship with someone you don’t talk to
  • We need to intentionally make time for God everyday
  • Examples of prayer: talk with God, pray the rosary, sing, journal, read a spiritual book, listen to worship music, Scripture, adoration
    • • It doesn’t matter what you do- just that you do it

Scripture

• We need to fill our hearts and minds with God’s Word if we want to follow Him- it teaches us to see things like Him
• This summer, if you read 1 chapter of one of the Gospels every day, you will finish all four Gospels by the end of summer
• The Gospels are at the heart of Scripture because they tell us the story of Jesus’ life. 

Sacraments

• There are 2 Sacraments that you can receive over and over again:
  • Eucharist- Mass attendance is crucial. It’s not about getting your journal signed
  • Confession- minimum once a year, but challenge them to go before school starts again in the fall (especially before being Confirmed!)
    • Confession not only gives you the forgiveness of sins, but the grace to not commit that sin again

Community

• Living as a disciple is difficult, but it is impossible to do it alone
• You need other people who are going to support you in your relationship with Jesus
• We have stuff here at the Church all summer- we have youth group, Bible Studies, nights of soccer, trips to water parks and other retreats.
  • It’s important to not let your faith take a break this summer!

Read Matthew 16:24-26: "Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?"

• Closing activity: Write down a game plan for each of these four disciplines of discipleship to commit to doing through the summer