During this Holy Easter season, Bishop Boyea invites you to join him for some brief reflections on Seven Words of Jesus Christ regarding the Seven Sacraments.
The Seven Sacraments are Baptism; Confirmation; the Eucharist; Penance; the Anointing of the Sick; Holy Orders; and Matrimony. Each sacrament is the ordinary means by which God mediates his divine grace to humanity through his Holy Church. They bring ever deeper peace, joy and meaning into our lives by drawing us ever more closely into a loving communion with the Holy Trinity.
In this second installment, Bishop Boyea meditates upon the Sacrament of Confirmation. In his Gospel, St. Luke tells of how Jesus Christ returned to the synagogue in Nazareth and read from the Prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor” (Luke 4:18). Then St. Luke, in his follow-up to his Gospel, called the Acts of the Apostles, noted several times that Jesus had been anointed by God (Acts 4:27; 10:38). And the Apostles continued this practice of anointing. What is the significance of that to us? Bishop Boyea explains.