Confirmation

“In Baptism we are received into the space of the communion of the Church, and in Confirmation we are given the power to extend this space, making it fruitful.”

“Confirmation presupposes Baptism, and elevates what is established here to a new mode of being without making it something different.”

“What Confirmation ‘adds’ to Baptism, as it were, is not a ratification of Christian maturity or the recognition of catechetical prowess, but the episcopal ‘seal,’ the recognition by the bishop that one’s Baptism binds one not to Christ in a private way, nor to a sect or schism of regional significance, but to the universal Church, the Corpus Mysticum .”

“The reaffirmation (confirmation) of baptismal identity is ordered toward the spreading and defense of the faith, that is, toward witness to Jesus Christ in word and deed.”

“Love is a paradox: it is already complete from the beginning, and it continuously unfolds without end.”

“Dante demonstrates how the very scholastic pursuit of wisdom can be a way of beauty, a via pulchritudinis , because truth is supremely beautiful, giving supreme delight.”

“A woman’s Antlitz reveals the inner theodramatic mystery of the feminine, and thereby the face of the Marian Church.”