Joyful Disciples

Confirmation, St. Teresa of Ávila, and the sacred rhythms that still hold us

Last night, I sat just behind my granddaughter at her Confirmation Mass, and before the liturgy had even begun, while the music rose softly through the sanctuary and I held the familiar rhythm of the prayers in my hands, I was suddenly transported back to my own eighth-grade Confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church.

In the Catholic tradition, confirmation is considered the sacrament of strengthening. A moment when the Holy Spirit seals and deepens the grace first given in baptism. A calling into mature faith. Into witness. Into belonging.

I remember very little from my own Confirmation day except the feeling of reverence, the seriousness of it all, and the strange awareness that I was stepping into something ancient and larger than myself. Last night, sitting there decades later watching my granddaughter among the eighty confirmands, I felt that same ache of mystery again.

There was another layer to the evening that moved me deeply. When I was confirmed, I chose St. Teresa of Ávila as my patron saint. Teresa the mystic, the reformer, the fierce contemplative who taught that prayer was friendship with God. Last night, my granddaughter chose the same confirmation name. My heart is full.

There are these moments when grace feels threaded through time. Women handing something sacred to women. Not certainty necessarily, but longing. Courage. Depth. A desire for God that survives even through doubt and complexity.

There was this beautiful continuity: my granddaughter’s sponsor was her aunt, the same aunt who once stood as sponsor for her mother, years ago. Watching them together at the altar felt like witnessing a living lineage of love and faithfulness. Imperfect, human, tender, enduring.

For the past several years, I have found myself returning occasionally to the church of my youth, sometimes for a grandchild’s Advent program, sometimes for Stations of the Cross, sometimes for a funeral. I have not returned as a practicing Catholic exactly, but each time I walk back through those doors, it feels a little like returning to a shoreline after being tossed by waves for a very long time.

There is something there that still steadies me.
The rhythm of the liturgy.
The silence before Mass begins.
Candles flickering in prayer.
The Eucharist.
The ancientness of it all.

Not certainty perhaps. But grounding. Anchoring. A reminder that beneath all the noise of the world, there are still sacred rhythms holding us together.

Maybe it began with my fascination, perhaps obsession, with Pope Francis. His tenderness. His moral clarity. His insistence that faith must remain close to the poor, the suffering, the vulnerable. And now, unexpectedly, I find myself listening closely to Pope Leo as well. In a world so loud with cruelty, domination, and performance, I find myself hungry for voices that still speak of mercy, dignity, humility, and the common good.

As I watched my granddaughter listening intently to the bishop’s homily, I felt overwhelming gratitude for her grounding in faith. Again and again, he told the confirmands:

“The Church does not need numbers. The Church needs joyful disciples.”

He returned to it throughout the entire message. Not bigger platforms. Not cultural power. Not spectacle. Joyful disciples.

In this cultural moment, joy itself can feel like resistance. Not denial. Not naivety. But a steady refusal to surrender our humanity to cynicism, fear, or despair.

Maybe joyful discipleship is less about certainty and more about presence.
Moment by moment. Breath by breath. Choosing love again. Choosing tenderness again. Choosing hope again.

May we never lose our capacity for joy,
even in weary and divided times. May we remember that faith is carried not only in doctrines, but in candles lit, songs remembered, hands extended, and love passed gently from one generation to another.

May we have the courage to become joyful disciples rooted not in certainty or power, but in compassion, humility, and hope.

And may the love of God at the center of the cosmos,
stronger than despair and tender enough for our smallest griefs,
continue to anchor us, moment by moment, in grace.

Amen.