Tonight is a big night for our family. My second son Sam, will be confirmed in the Catholic faith. The parish makes a big deal about it which is good I guess. At practice it took as long to arrange and practice the procession as it did to go through the rest of the ceremony. Catholic sacraments are funny like that. When I was the wedding coordinator the wedding procession took the most time to rehearse too. Same with first communion where tons of second graders line up to come in. Catholics take their processions seriously!
So Sam will process in and sit in the pew with his Aunt Kay, who is also his sponsor. Mr. Pete and I will be up in the choir loft with the choir. We will join them during the homily and then be behind them as they walk up for the confirmation. Aunt Kay, with her right hand on Sam’s shoulder will walk up to the bishop and announce his confirmation name out loud. “Tarcisius!”
Both of my boys have chosen rather obscure saints for their confirmation patrons. Calvin chose Damien after Father Damien the Leper. Sam chose Tarcisius, the Roman teen who lost his life rather than give up the Blessed Sacrament. Both saints showed uncommon courage. Damien chose to serve people with a disease he was bound to get and cause his early death. Tarcisius chose to hang on to the Blessed Sacrament, protecting it with his life rather than give it up to his unbelieving friends. An awesome story of bravery as well as standing up to peer pressure for what you believe in.
So Samuel becomes Tarcisius tonight.
After his confirmation, Sam will join the other young musicians who have prepared the offertory hymn, “Blessed are They.” Sam will be on the piano joined by a flute, violin, electric bass, horn and four sopranos, two of which could not seem to find the pitch at all at the last practice I attended. Hopefully they will tonight.
Mr. Pete and I then stay with the choir for the rest of the mass. We aren’t a very big group, but we are joined with the entire parish choir which greatly increases our numbers.
Then off to a neighborhood restaurant for a big celebration for the newly confirmed. I hope that it will be a night Sam will remember for a long time.
Grandma will not be there which is a shame because she has spent hours preparing him for confirmation. She was discharged from the hospital today, which totally surprised me! She received a blood transfusion, two prescriptions and some instructions, and then out the door! Between her admission and her discharge, I’ve been six hours or more into mom’s care this week. Most of that was spent waiting for paperwork. She felt much better today though so hopefully she will continue to improve at home.
My oldest Calvin won’t be there either. He has to work tonight. He had swim practice and an art project to finish at school too. I never see him it seems and I miss that. I know he wants to pull away and be a man, but I wish he’d check in once in a while so I could know he is okay. I remember being gone a lot too when I wasin high school, but we didn’t have cell phones then. I’m not sure if having that instance accessibility is a good thing or nor, especially when he just turns off his phone anyway!
Hopefully Calvin will join us on Tuesday evening when we are interviewed for the church paper. Geesh. They want to take pictures and everything. They want to write about what we do to commemorate lent. So I’ll have to get ready for that this weekend, assuming everything stays okay with mom. I’ll probably blog about it.
The rest of the afternoon I’m going to clean the house and get ready for this evening. Sam has his outfit all picked out. Stay tuned for more pictures of this exciting event!
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