Jonathan Martin Ciraulo

“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 .”

“Instead of conceiving the institution of baptism as a most fitting crowning of the inherent symbolism of water, it could be said that baptism is the very reason for which water was created from the beginning.”

“[T]he sacramental principle is a vision of the ecstatic nature of finite reality, a belief that matter can be more than itself, that nature as a whole can function as a parable and instrument of the spiritual.”