Commontide
Confirmation — said by the Bishop before the laying on of hands
Almighty and everliving God, we beseech you to strengthen these your servants for witness and ministry through the power of your Holy Spirit. Daily increase in them your manifold virtues of grace: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness, and the spirit of holy fear, now and for ever. Amen.
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This confirmation prayer is built around Isaiah 11:2-3, the messianic prophecy listing seven gifts of the Spirit. In some form it has accompanied the laying on of hands since at least the eighth century, when a closely parallel text appears in a Gallican liturgical book; Thomas Cranmer gave it its familiar English shape in 1549.