Pentecost is seen as the first confirmation and the birth of the Church. It must have been an overwhelming experience. It was just nine days after Christ ascended into heaven, and the apostles were still unsure of what to do. They had gathered in the upper room with Mary, the room where the Last Supper had happened. On the day of the Feast of Pentecost, one of the biggest Jewish High Holy Days, when Jews from across the ancient world would gather in Jerusalem, suddenly, in the Upper Room, the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles as tongues of fire and they were filled with the Spirit of God. We see a dramatic change in the disciples from that moment on. Before then, they were too afraid to leave the Upper Room, for fear of the Jewish and Roman officials. After all, what happened to Jesus might still happen to them. After that moment, they left the Upper Room and, with St. Peter taking the lead, began to preach the Gospel of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke writes, “After recalling the Apostles, they had them flogged, ordered them to stop speaking in the name of Jesus, and dismissed them. So they left the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name” (Acts 5:41). The apostles had gone from fleeing Jerusalem, hiding, and fearing what might happen to them, to publicly preaching the Gospel, ignoring the Jewish officials, and rejoicing at their suffering for the sake of the name of Jesus. This is the primary grace of the Sacrament of Confirmation: Courage. The courage to live as a Christian and preach the Gospel, “in season and out of season,” no matter the consequences. There are a lot of reasons that we might choose not to speak up or be obvious about our Christianity. We want to avoid nasty looks, arguments with family and friends, and insults. Some people face professional setbacks if they don’t hide their Christianity. Finally, there are still many places in the world where Christianity is illegal, and Christians face arrest, exile, torture, and even death. We ought to stand up for the faith out of gratitude, because the Lord redeemed us by the spilling of His Precious Blood. We ought to stand up for the faith out of hope in eternal life in heaven, because the Lord said, “Therefore, everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father, who is in heaven. But whoever will have denied me before men, I also will deny before my Father, who is in heaven” (Mt. 10:32-33). We ought to stand up for the faith in charity, because we believe that it’s good for people to come to know the truth, so that they can follow it. In the second book of Maccabees, the king outlaws Judaism and sends out forces to ensure that people are converting to his religion. One of the ways they do this is to force people to eat pork, which is not Kosher and so against the Law of Moses. One old man, Eleazar, is taken aside by his friends after refusing to eat the pork, for which the penalty is death, and they suggest switching the pork with something else, so that he can eat it without breaking the law but the soldiers will be fooled. In response, Eleazar says, “Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life, lest many of the young should suppose that Eleazar in his ninetieth year has gone over to an alien religion, and though my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they should be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age. For even if for the present I should avoid the punishment of men, yet whether I live or die I shall not escape the hands of the Almighty. Therefore, by manfully giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws” (2 Mac 6:24-27). The Sacrament of Confirmation gives us the grace to overcome those obstacles and not let our fear control us, but we still have to actively use that grace. As Christ told His disciples, “When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:19-20).