Pope Francis: baptism, confirmation, and first Communion ‘form a single saving event’
By Father Randy Stice
In recent columns, we have explored the relationship between the Eucharist and the other sacraments. In the final column in this series, we will look at the Eucharist as the culmination of the sacraments of initiation: baptism, confirmation, and first Communion.
In the first centuries of the Church, “the sacraments of initiation were conferred in a single continuous rite. Then, due to a number of different factors, confirmation came to be conferred separately from baptism, and in some cases confirmation was conferred after the Eucharist, altering the original order. In 1910, St. Pius X lowered the age of first Communion so that it was received before confirmation. As a result, the traditional order of the sacraments of initiation—baptism, confirmation, Eucharist—became for children baptism, Eucharist, confirmation.”1 This is still the sequence for children in most dioceses. However, unbaptized adults still receive the sacraments of initiation in a continuous rite, preferably at the Easter Vigil.
Baptism is “the door to life and to the kingdom of God.”2 It marks us as Christ’s own and confers the forgiveness of sins, new birth as God’s adopted children, incorporation into the Church, and communion with all baptized Christians. Its relationship to the Eucharist is expressed in different ways. The rite itself “expresses the orientation of baptism to the Eucharist by having the newly baptized child brought to the altar for the praying of the Our Father.”3 The conclusion of the rite anticipates confirmation and the Eucharist: “Through confirmation they will receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and, approaching the altar of the Lord, they will share at the table of his sacrifice and will call upon God as Father in the midst of the Church.”4
Baptism introduces us into the life of the Trinity, and confirmation deepens this relationship. Confirmation enriches us with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, conforms us more closely to the Son, unites us more perfectly to His body, the Church, and draws us more deeply into Christ’s saving mission. Both baptism and confirmation confer a “seal” or “sacramental character” that “remains forever in the Christian as a positive disposition for grace, a promise and guarantee of divine protection, and as a vocation to divine worship and to the service of the Church.”5
Our participation in the life of the Trinity that began with baptism and was deepened by confirmation is fulfilled in the Eucharist. When we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we receive the food of eternal life, manifest the unity of God’s people, offer ourselves with Christ, and pray for the unity of the family of God through a fuller outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The sacraments of initiation “so work together that they bring to full stature the Christian faithful, who exercise in the Church and in the world the mission of the entire Christian people.”6
The sacraments of initiation, said Pope Francis, “form a single saving event … in which we are inserted into Jesus Christ, who died and rose, and become new creatures and members of the Church.”7 Our reception of these three sacraments “bears a certain likeness to the origin, development, and nourishing of natural life. Born anew by baptism, the faithful are strengthened by the sacrament of confirmation and finally are sustained by the food of eternal life in the Eucharist.”8 Through these sacraments, we “receive in increasing measure the treasures of the divine life and advance toward the perfection of charity.”9
These three sacraments together deepen our relationship with God, our relationship with the Church, and our communion with the Holy Spirit. In baptism we become God’s adopted children, new creatures. Confirmation then configures us more fully to Christ through the sacramental seal or character and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Eucharist deepens this union with Christ, for “the principal fruit of receiving the Eucharist in Holy Communion is an intimate union with Christ Jesus.”10 In a similar way, the sacraments of initiation deepen our union with Christ’s body, the Church. In baptism, we are incorporated into the Church, to which confirmation binds us more perfectly. Eucharistic Communion unites us “to all the faithful in one body—the Church,” renewing, strengthening, and deepening the ecclesial communion “already achieved by baptism.”11
Third, the sacraments of initiation also progressively deepen our fellowship with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is first conferred at baptism, a relationship that is strengthened when we receive the seven gifts of the Spirit and are sealed with the gift of the Spirit in confirmation. In eucharistic Communion we not only receive the Body and Blood of Christ but also His Spirit. “By the gift of His body and blood,” writes St. John Paul II, “Christ increases within us the gift of His Spirit, already poured out in baptism and bestowed as a ‘seal’ in the sacrament of confirmation.”12
St. John Paul II beautifully summarizes interplay of the sacraments of initiation as one saving event. “In the depths of eucharistic worship, we find a continual echo of the sacraments a Christian initiation: baptism and confirmation. Where better is there expressed the truth that we are not only ‘called God’s children’ but ‘that is what we are’ by virtue of the sacrament of baptism, if not precisely in the fact that in the Eucharist we become partakers of the body and blood of God’s only Son? And what predisposes us more to be ‘true witnesses of Christ’ before the world—as we are enabled to be by the sacrament of confirmation—than eucharistic Communion, in which Christ bears witness to us, and we to Him?”13
1 Understanding the Sacraments of Initiation: A Rite-Based Approach, Father Randy Stice, p. 114
2 General Introduction to Christian Initiation (GICI), 3
3 Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 1244
4 Order of Baptism of Children, 68
5 CCC, 1121
6 GICI, 2
7 www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2014/documents/papa-francesco_20140129_udienza-generale.html
8 St. Paul VI, Apostolic Constitution on the Sacrament of Confirmation
9 CCC, 1212
10 CCC, 1391
11 CCC, 1396
12 St. John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 17
13 Dominice Cenae, 7
Father Randy Stice is director of the diocesan Office of Worship and Liturgy. He can be reached at frrandy@dioknox.org.