Sealing the Spirit

Confirmation is the rite that completes Christian initiation, understood to confer or seal the gift of the Holy Spirit on one already baptised, ordinarily through the laying on of hands and anointing with consecrated oil (chrism). Its history reflects a gradual separation from baptism: in the early church the bishop's hand-laying and anointing followed immediately upon the water, but as infant baptism became universal and dioceses grew, the bishop's part came in the West to be deferred, and confirmation emerged as a distinct rite administered later, often at an age of understanding.

The traditions weigh it differently, the Catholic Church counts it among the seven sacraments, conferred by a bishop or delegated priest; the Eastern churches anoint with chrism at baptism itself, so that initiation is not divided; many Protestant bodies retain confirmation as a mature profession of the faith into which one was baptised, without regarding it as a sacrament. Across these differences it marks the point at which the baptised takes up, or has sealed upon them, full membership in the Christian community.