INSTRUCTION IL

ON OTHER SACRAMENTS, AND SACRAMENTALS.

Confirmation.--Importance of it.-Matter, form, and minister. Required Conditions.-Effects.-Ceremonies of Confirmation.Extreme Unction.-When to receive it.-Matter and form.Matrimony.-Contract. - Impediments. - Mixed Marriages.Conditions required.-Banns.-Ceremony in Protestant Church forbidden.-Holy Oils.-In what sense Holy.- Holy Water.How blessed.- Blessed Salt-Candles blessed on the Purification.-Blessed Ashes and Palm Branches.-Other blessings.Use of Sacramentals.

In the last Instruction I told you what you had to do to prepare for your First Communion.

I must now explain shortly the other Sacraments you may have occasion to receive.

The first of these is Confirmation. This is a Sacrament of very great dignity and importance.

The Catechism tells us that "Confirmation is Sacrament by which we receive the Holy Ghost, in order to make us strong and perfect Christians, and soldiers of Jesus Christ."

It resembles the Holy Eucharist in this, that we

receive not only a special gift, but God Himself, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. We are made in a special manner temples of the Holy Ghost: "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever." (S. John xiv. 16.)

We may learn what is its importance from this, that Our Lord would not allow His apostles to enter on the work of their ministry till they had been fortified by the coming down of the Holy Ghost. He told them to wait for this in Jerusalem, and, accordingly, they spent ten days in prayer, preparing for the day of Pentecost.

As we said before, it is one of those Sacraments which make a "mark or character" on the soul, and therefore can never be repeated. This means, as I explained, that it gives us the dignity of soldiers of Christ, and that although we may disgrace this dignity, and turn it to our own shame, we can never lose it, and be as if we had not received it.

You can best understand the effects it is intended to produce on our souls, by considering what was the change it made in the apostles.

We see three great qualities which were given to them by the Holy Ghost.

1st. That of spiritual wisdom. Our Lord had said to them: "He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you." (S. John xiv. 26.)

Whilst our Saviour was still with them, they seemed incapable of taking in the truths He was teaching, and

were constantly misapprehending and misapplying His words; but, as soon as they had received the Holy Spirit, the gift of spiritual wisdom enabled them to be the unerring teachers of all mankind.

The office of the Holy Ghost was not to be Teacher in the first instance. Our Lord had carefully instructed them by His own mouth, and the Holy Spirit was to "bring back to their minds" His words, and to enable them to understand the lessons He had taught. Just in the same way now, our Lord teaches us our faith by the authority of His Church, and then His Spirit enables us better to understand this teaching.

2nd. The gift of courage. Before they had received this gift, they were timid and weak. They abandoned Our Lord at the time of His Passion, and after His Resurrection were to be found in a room, the doors of which were "shut for fear of the Jews." After the day of Pentecost, all this was changed. Then they had no difficulty in preaching Christ crucified to Jews and Gentiles, and "rejoiced to be found worthy to suffer persecution for the Name of Jesus."

3rd. The spirit of self-devotion and piety, which we see in all they did, and without which neither Wisdom nor Courage would have been of any avail.

Christians need all these same gifts just as much as the apostles did. We do not indeed require them in the same degree, because we have not the same great work before us, but still we require Wisdom, Courage, and Piety, suitable to our wants, and we shall never be able to save our souls without them.

You must understand that these gifts are not conferred on us now in a sudden and perceptible manner, as they were on them; they are infused into our souls as habitual qualities, which are to be brought out in course of time by co-operating with the graces we receive from God.

I must now tell you of the matter, form, and minister, which are required for the outward part of the Sacrament.

The matter consists of the imposition, or laying on of hands, and also the anointing with the Holy Chrism. The imposition of hands represents, as it were, the coming down of the Holy Spirit, and the anointing, the grace which the Holy Spirit infuses into our souls. Chrism is used for all things specially consecrated to God; for example, in the consecration of churches, altars, chalices, &c., and when a Christian receives this anointing on his forehead, it signifies that he, too, is specially consecrated to God, as His temple. "Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Cor. iii. 16.)

I shall explain to you later on about the Holy Oils more particularly.

The "Form" of the Sacrament, that is, the words which give a special and precise meaning to the matter, are: "I sign thee with the sign of the Cross, I confirin thee with the Chrism of Salvation, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

The ordinary minister of this Sacrament is a bishon

only. The Catechism says the ordinary minister, be cause the Pope sometimes, under special circumstances, delegates this power to simple priests.

Why is it that only bishops can confer the Sacrament of Confirmation?

We read, in the Acts of the Apostles, that the apostles retained to themselves the power of the imposition of hands. Baptizing, preaching, and other offices of the ministry they committed to those whom they had chosen as their assistants. When, however, it was necessary that their new converts should receive the Holy Ghost, the apostles themselves went to impose hands on them. To show this, we read that: "When the apostles, who were in Jerusalem, had heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who, when they were come, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost." (Acts viii. 17.)

In the Catholic Church it is the bishops who represent the apostles, as far as power of "Order' is concerned, at least. They alone have the fulness of the priesthood conferred by Our Lord on the apostles. It therefore belongs to the episcopal office to communicate the Holy Ghost by the imposition of hands.

Now let us consider the conditions required for receiving Confirmation worthily.

1. It is necessary (ordinarily, at least), to be of age to understand the Christian Faith, and to be sufficiently instructed in its principal truths. As we said just now, the apostles did not receive the Holy Spirit until they