Confirmation at Holy Family takes place every other year at the Cathedral. Students in the 7th grade & 8th grade, who have attended Catholic School or Faith Formation Classes for one or more years in our parish family are eligible to receive Confirmation. If you have not be contacted by the parish at the beginning of the school year in which your child is entering 7th grade or 8th grade, please call the parish office at 513-732-2218 and speak with Pam Edwards for assistance, dates, and requirements.
Those who have not yet received Confirmation and wish to, will need to attend the OCIA Classes before he/she can be confirmed. Please call the parish office at 513-732-2218 for more details.
At confirmation we receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and confirm our baptismal promises. Greater awareness of the grace of the Holy Spirit is conferred through the anointing of chrism oil and the laying on of hands by the Bishop.
Through the Sacrament of Confirmation, we renew our baptismal promises and commit to living a life of maturity in the Christian faith. As we read in the Lumen Gentium (the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church) from the Second Vatican Council: Bound more intimately to the Church by the sacrament of confirmation, [the baptized] are endowed by the Holy Spirit with special strength; hence they are more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith both by word and by deed as true witnesses of Christ (no. 11).
In the Acts of the Apostles we read of the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. While baptism is the sacrament of new life, confirmation gives birth to that life. Baptism initiates us into the Church and names us as children of God, whereas confirmation calls us forth as God’s children and unites us more fully to the active messianic mission of Christ in the world.
After receiving the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Apostles went out and confirmed others, showing confirmation to be an individual and separate sacrament: Peter and John at Samaria (Acts 8:5-6, 14-17) and Paul at Ephesus (Acts 19:5-6). Also, the Holy Spirit came down on Jews and Gentiles alike in Caesarea, prior to their baptisms. Recognizing this as a confirmation by the Holy Spirit, Peter commanded that they be baptized (cf. Acts 10:47).