Preparation for youth begins in seventh grade and continues after the Rite of Confirmation throughout the eighth-grade year. We celebrate the Rite of Confirmation at St. Andrew Cathedral in the Fall.
The Rite of Confirmation date will be published in Fall of 2025 at the Cathedral of St. Andrews.
All those seeking to receive the sacrament must register with Mrs. Stacie Byers, our Middle School Youth Minister & Confirmation Coordinator.
Please click on the links below to download information:
- Sacrament of Confirmation Handbook – IHM Students
- Sacrament of Confirmation Handbook – Faith Formation Students
- Sacrament of Confirmation Registration Form
- Saint Research Project
- My Hour With Jesus
- 2025Confirmation Sponsor Packet
Please contact Stacie Byers, youth@ihmparishgr.org, 616-241-4477 ext 1115
**If you are an adult seeking Confirmation we have classes specifically for you. Please reach out to our Director of Religious Education, Stefanie Iwan (pa@ihmparishgr.org) to learn more about our OCIA Program.
Confirmation, together with Baptism and Eucharist, form the Sacraments of Initiation that are all intimately connected. In the Sacrament of Confirmation, the baptized person is “sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit” and is strengthened for service to the Body of Christ.
Those who believed in the Apostles’ preaching were baptized and received the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands. The Apostles baptized believers in water and the Spirit. Then they imparted the special gift of the Spirit through the laying on of hands. “‘The imposition of hands is rightly recognized by the Catholic tradition as the origin of the sacrament of Confirmation, which in a certain way perpetuates the grace of Pentecost in the Church’”
(CCC, no. 1288, citing Pope Paul VI, Divinae Consortium Naturae, no. 659).
By the second century, Confirmation was also conferred by anointing with holy oil, which came to be called sacred Chrism. “This anointing highlights the name ‘Christian,’ which means ‘anointed’ and derives from that of Christ himself whom God ‘anointed with the Holy Spirit’” (CCC, no. 1289, citing Acts 10:38).
