Our middle child, Simon, was confirmed a few weeks ago. He’s been in confirmation preparation for the past year with his classmates. Lucy, just a year behind him, is beginning her own preparation, and will be confirmed next fall. So we’re all about confirmation these days in the Noem home.

A friend from back home has kids the same age as ours and she said she was considering letting them decide for themselves if they wanted to get confirmed. I could see where she was coming from: confirmation seems to be a sacrament that welcomes someone into an adult faith, so before a child is confirmed, they should express a firm and personal commitment to faith. In essence, she wanted her kids to choose confirmation for themselves, because she wanted them to choose the Catholic faith for themselves.

I disagreed with her, though.

Confirmation is sacrament that is really important for our Catholic community because it offers a physical connection to Jesus Christ through the bishop. Jesus touched his followers, and the successors to Peter and the disciples were all chosen by a similar “laying on” of hands. Each bishop is ordained by the same process — other bishops lay their hands on him. And during confirmation, the bishop lays hands on each of us. It’s almost as if Jesus Christ was reaching through time and space to physically touch us in the sacrament of confirmation.

The bottom line is that confirmation is much, much more than “graduating” from religious education. It is the completing sacrament of initiation — it follows baptism and Eucharist and seals us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit — but that means it is the start of something, not the end. All sacraments are starting lines, not finish lines. They give us the strength of grace and the community’s support on our journey, and confirmation is no different. This is why, for me, I can’t think of a compelling reason why we’d leave that as an optional choice for a child.

Put it another way: we don’t let Simon decide whether or not he will do his homework. He doesn’t get to choose if he’d like to start drinking alcohol. We don’t let him decide to stay up all night playing on the computer. If we shape his life and health in these ways, why would we let him decide how to shape the most important part of his life? Yes, he’s reaching adulthood and growing in maturity, but he’s still a child. He is not capable of seeing the whole picture in terms of what’s best for himself. As any parent of a teenager knows, they need the help of grace to grow into adulthood. Why would we deprive them of that sacramental sealing?

The corollary here is that faith has to be a real thing in our lives. We can’t expect the sacraments to do all the work for us. Just because a child is confirmed is no guarantee that they will grow up in the faith. Any sacrament is its own encounter with God’s grace, but that encounter will mean more if we receive it within a life of discipleship. That means taking steps to let faith shape our lives.

Another friend from back home described how he made this choice for faith with his family. He said that his daughter knows what the family’s favorite sports team is. She knows to expect to spend every Saturday in the fall watching this team on TV. She knows their best players. She knows who their hated rivals are. Being a fan of this team makes a difference in the life of this family — it shapes who they are. My friend looked at this pattern and realized that he wanted the family to place the same priority on faith.

Letting faith shape our lives does not mean being perfect. We don’t have to look like a Rockwellian family in the pew on Sunday. Just getting there is a really good start. Making faith real means putting our lives in God’s hands in some way. And if we put ourselves in a position to need and rely on and trust God, we won’t be left hanging. In fact, we’ll find the security and meaning and purpose we’ve been longing for.