Following up on last week's lesson on the Sacrament of Confirmation, in this week's selection from the Baltimore Catechism, we look at the effects of Confirmation.
Confirmation strengthens our faith by increasing sanctifying grace—the life of God—in our souls. Through this sacrament, we also receive the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which perfect our human nature and allow us to live our lives the way that God wishes us to live. While some of these gifts, such as fortitude and piety, have parallels in the natural virtues, they become something more when animated by grace.
In practice, those seven gifts—wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord—bear the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit: charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, long-suffering, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, and chastity.
The lesson from the Baltimore Catechism includes a listing of the Beatitudes, and it may not be clear, at first glance, what relevance they have to a discussion of the effects of Confirmation. The qualities listed in the Beatitudes that lead to blessedness stem from the gifts of the Holy Spirit and are part of the fruits. To live our lives according to the Beatitudes requires great faith, and is impossible without sanctifying grace.
Lesson Sixteenth from the Confirmation Catechism has 11 questions. Note that the lesson begins with Question 176, continuing with the numbering from Lesson Fifteenth.
There is no parallel lesson this week in the First Communion Catechism. The younger students will continue their studies next week, when we examine the Sacrament of Penance.
Check out this week's lesson, and if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments or ask them in the Catholicism Forum!
Previous Lessons in Sunday School:- Welcome to Sunday School!
- On God and His Perfections
- On the Unity and Trinity of God
- On Creation
- On Our First Parents and the Fall
- On Sin and Its Kinds
- On the Incarnation and Redemption
- On Our Lord's Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension
- On the Holy Ghost and His Descent Upon the Apostles
- On the Effects of the Redemption
- On the Church
- On the Attributes and Marks of the Church
- On the Sacraments in General
- On Baptism
- On Confirmation