2023 Confirmations Schedule Released for the U.S. District

See the Confirmations Schedule >>
 

Bishops Bernard Tissier de Mallerais and Bernard Fellay will have a busy schedule through the Spring and Fall of 2023, visiting a total of 25 chapels of the SSPX U.S. District. Their Excellencies are two of the auxiliary bishops of the SSPX, consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988. They are appointed to aid the priests and the faithful of the Society by conferring the sacraments of Holy Orders and Confirmation.

Bishop Fellay was the Superior General of the Society until 2019. He now serves the current Superior General, Fr. Davide Pagliarani, in an advisory capacity, residing at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Virginia. 

Bishop Tissier de Mallerais was formerly the rector of the SSPX Seminary in Ecône, Switzerland, and currently resides at the same after spending time last year at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary. He and Bishop Fellay serve the Society in their travels throughout the districts of the SSPX, administering confirmations, blessing chapels, and ordaining priests.

Related items from Angelus Press

• Preparation for Confirmation
• Novena to the Holy Ghost
• The Paraclete: A Manual of Instruction and Devotion to the Holy Ghost
• Christ Acts Through the Sacraments
• Sacramental certificate for Confirmation
   

St. Thomas Aquinas on the character of Confirmation
 

Extract from Summa Theologica, IIIa, q. 72, art 5: Whether the sacrament of Confirmation imprints a character?

As stated above (Question 63, Article 2), a character is a spiritual power ordained to certain sacred actions. Now it has been said above (1; 65, 1) that, just as Baptism is a spiritual regeneration unto Christian life, so also is Confirmation a certain spiritual growth bringing man to perfect spiritual age.

But it is evident, from a comparison with the life of the body, that the action which is proper to man immediately after birth, is different from the action which is proper to him when he has come to perfect age. And therefore by the sacrament of Confirmation man is given a spiritual power in respect of sacred actions other than those in respect of which he receives power in Baptism. For in Baptism he receives power to do those things which pertain to his own salvation, forasmuch as he lives to himself: whereas in Confirmation he receives power to do those things which pertain to the spiritual combat with the enemies of the Faith.

This is evident from the example of the apostles, who, before they received the fulness of the Holy Ghost, were in the "upper room ...persevering ...in prayer" (Acts 1:13-14); whereas afterward they went out and feared not to confess their faith in public, even in the face of the enemies of the Christian Faith. And therefore it is evident that a character is imprinted in the sacrament of Confirmation.

Read Fr. Goffine's instruction from The Church's Year about the Feast of Pentecost and the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost.