On Sunday evening, I spoke to a group of sixty 9th graders preparing for the sacrament of Confirmation at St. Peter’s parish in St. Paul. The theme of my talk was The Search for God.
Among other things, Confirmation is an invitation to begin a process of conversion – a process of moving from calling oneself Catholic because that is the religion into which one’s parents chose to baptized him or her to freely embracing one’s faith for oneself. Part of what I wanted to convey to the students is that having questions along the way is natural and not something they should fear or worry about. I also wanted to help them understand that our path to God does not always follow a straight line and that all the twists and turns become a part of who we are. To convey those messages, I shared with them some of my own journey from Catholicism to Buddhism and back to Catholicism. I spoke to the students for about 30 minutes after which we had another 20-25 minutes of questions and answers.
I recorded the talk I gave and, although my comments were geared to a 14-15 year-old audience, they may still be of interest. You can find the podcast here.
Creo en Dios! 