Until Catholic friends started praying for me, I didn't know that God could have mercy even on a sinner like me. I pray every day for the family of Andrew whom I killed. Through the power of prayer a hardened criminal found God's mercy, and it has turned his heart around. He cannot undo his crime, but now he prays for Andrew and his family. His, too, is an unlikely story of evangelization.
Confirmation fortifies our hope when the journey home to the kingdom gets turbulent.
The Holy Spirit helps us to become truthful with God, and that sets us free. As Pope John Paul has said, we cannot be genuinely free unless we know and live our transcendence over the world - and if we know God as our friend. God, our friend, invites us to seek his mercy when all seems bleak and lost because of sin. The Spirit teaches true freedom even behind prison bars. If it happens there, surely it can happen in our homes.