We start the new years Confirmation group tomorrow with twelve or thirteen teenagers signed up. This appears to be a particularly young lot, so some of our material will need a little tailoring. My co leader and I have been talking about where to begin, especially with the meditation part of the class. In this discussion we have marveled at what the Holy Spirit has in store for us this year. We have learned to trust that the group that forms is exactly the group that needs to come in to being.
Often times our particular group seems to attract some of the most vulnerable boys in the college and from its sister girls school run by the Dominican sisters, yet the groups develop into tight knit communities across divides that would normally keep the teenagers separate with in the broader school context.
We are also intrigued how one year binds to another, despite having no real contact and only a shared experience of the class to join them. Before Christmas when one of a set of twins from the class of two years ago was killed in a car accident members of several years classes turned up at the funeral mass, despite having not known him, while all the members of his class either arrived or sent messages if they were out of the country studying.
We are certain that the shared meditation and prayer is key to this group unity, and it most certainly ties each teen to our own hearts.
Trusting the group is always a good idea, and pushing them to new levels of spiritual awareness is good too - I bet you and your co-leader are awesome teachers.
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