On Sunday, June 11, 2017, my daughter, Lucy, was baptized into the Church. On the whole, during the Rite of Baptism, the look on my face was somewhere between an awkward teenager staring at a pretty girl across the room and a person who just won the lottery. It was just real cool.
As a result of said giddiness, let me ramble a bit around some of the awesomeness of watching my dear child travel through the waters of Christ’s death and resurrection into her initiation as priest, prophet, and king.
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| Here's my dear friend, Fr. Kevin, C.PP.S., baptizing Lucy Karen, as my best friend and Lucy's godfather, Tim, holds her holy little head over the water (not pictured: godmother extraordinaire Steph). |
Godparents is hard, yo. My wife, Katherine, and I thought a lot about how to approach it. We talked to a lot of people. We wanted to choose people who are important to us, who love us and will love Lucy, and for whom faith and a relationship with God are important. This isn’t just an honorary title or a feather in one’s cap; this is an intimate, spiritual responsibility.
At the core of our deliberation, we struggled with having, between us, three brothers and no sisters, and so far just one sister-in-law (who we love). We ultimately decided to affirm the excellent job we know our brothers will do as uncles and extend the commission of godparenting to our dear, non-blood family members. As our parents artfully affirmed, we knew we had only good options and just had to choose one of them. We picked my best friend of twenty-two years and counting and wedding-Best-Man, Tim, and our dear friend from college and wedding-Maid-of-Honor, Stephanie. Steph couldn’t get to Chicago for the baptism -- though we know she will bring unparalleled passion and commitment to her responsibility -- but watching my best friend/best man/Confirmation sponsor hold my daughter for her anointing and blessing with water was the cat’s pajamas.
Sacraments are moments of continuity in the life of grace. These moments are not meant to be box-checkers for a spiritual resume that denote a faith picked up and put down with nonchalance. They’re opportunities to come before God and the Church for initiation, healing, and commitment in service. This rhythm, marked regularly by the renewing grace of the Eucharist, orients one’s life and spirit toward the God from whom we came and to whom we will return. For Katherine and me, the thoughtfulness that goes into the details of the liturgy helps illuminate the beauty of the Sacrament; this was true of our wedding and its Mass, and it was true for Lucy’s baptism.
As mentioned above, the continuity of our best friends serving in these huge roles for our family’s Sacraments of Matrimony and Baptism is amazing, not to mention having my best friend continuing in his sponsoring me as a fully initiated Catholic. Katherine suggested to my dad, brothers, and sister-in-law that we do something special with my late mother’s wedding dress, so Lucy’s white baptismal garment was specially tailored using the fabric and features from that dress, which my dad had left preserved from the 70s. We invited my friend, Fr. Kevin, to celebrate the baptism, following the beautiful job he did with our wedding Mass. And Kevin, always one to bring eloquence and catechesis, provided beautiful teaching moments as he executed the Rite of Baptism. Chief among them, as we surrounded the baptismal font, Kevin unpacked the Romans 6 (see vv. 1-4 especially) theology of baptism, that we go down into the waters of Christ’s death and rise from the waters to new life in Christ, describing the holy water -- in the words of the Church fathers -- as a “liquid tomb.”
You get out of it what you put into it. It’s a cliched saying, often used to describe Mass, retreats, religion, etc., and plenty of other things, but it’s just true. The details described above involved foresight, discernment, and intentionality, and those qualities help to steer our hearts toward prayerful consideration of what baptism entails. Then, when we gathered our friends and family in the church on that day, such intentionality further drew our community into more engaged consideration of the grace of the Sacrament.
It makes me think of weddings, and how people often dread or avoid “Church weddings.” They feel that they’re too stodgy, constrained, obligatory, etc. Speaking just for myself, our “Church wedding” was important to us but also became a highlight of the “wedding weekend” experience for a lot of our guests, many of whom are not Catholic or do not attend Mass regularly, and that happened because of the intentionality of the music, the ritual, the worship aid, the homily, the family and friends serving as ministers, etc. I think the fact that we put as much or more energy into the Mass as we did into the wedding reception helped to preserve and strengthen the focus on the Sacrament and not just the open-bar party that followed. If people didn’t put thorough energy into their wedding receptions, they would probably feel constrained and obligatory, too!
The texts of the Church are seemingly inexhaustible sources of beauty. Catholic liturgy is often ridiculed for its rigidity, routine, formalism, etc., as perception can lead people to feel turned off by how we celebrate. However, there’s often unrecognized beauty in the texts of the Church, especially in the carefully written prayers of our liturgies. The prayers all draw carefully on Scripture and the rich Tradition of the faith to invite the faithful into dynamic, rich prayer. The syntax and word choice can be clunky, but I think my own tendency to zone out or simply not attentively listen is a greater obstacle than grammar or style.
In the Rite of Baptism, amid my dreamy-eyed gawking, I was struck especially my this prayer that followed the initial lighting of Lucy’s baptismal candle:
The profundity of that image really floored me and drove home the gravity of marrying, having a child, and endeavoring to raise a family. As I thought about the baptism in the days leading up to it, I thought of Katherine and Lucy (and God-willing, future children) as the most concrete Kingdom-building my life has seen and will ever see. And this baptism, following on our marriage, is a first concrete step of our family’s work to lay the bricks that build the Kingdom and pave the roads to the fullness of Christ.
In that prayer, in that moment, God gave me a glimpse of what the point of all of this is -- why we bother to commit to another in love, to give of ourselves in parenthood, to bring a child to the water. And as I think of that image again, I realize that in that moment of beatific vision, I’d be standing right behind my daughter as we together reach our Providence. Can't wait.
At the core of our deliberation, we struggled with having, between us, three brothers and no sisters, and so far just one sister-in-law (who we love). We ultimately decided to affirm the excellent job we know our brothers will do as uncles and extend the commission of godparenting to our dear, non-blood family members. As our parents artfully affirmed, we knew we had only good options and just had to choose one of them. We picked my best friend of twenty-two years and counting and wedding-Best-Man, Tim, and our dear friend from college and wedding-Maid-of-Honor, Stephanie. Steph couldn’t get to Chicago for the baptism -- though we know she will bring unparalleled passion and commitment to her responsibility -- but watching my best friend/best man/Confirmation sponsor hold my daughter for her anointing and blessing with water was the cat’s pajamas.
Sacraments are moments of continuity in the life of grace. These moments are not meant to be box-checkers for a spiritual resume that denote a faith picked up and put down with nonchalance. They’re opportunities to come before God and the Church for initiation, healing, and commitment in service. This rhythm, marked regularly by the renewing grace of the Eucharist, orients one’s life and spirit toward the God from whom we came and to whom we will return. For Katherine and me, the thoughtfulness that goes into the details of the liturgy helps illuminate the beauty of the Sacrament; this was true of our wedding and its Mass, and it was true for Lucy’s baptism.
As mentioned above, the continuity of our best friends serving in these huge roles for our family’s Sacraments of Matrimony and Baptism is amazing, not to mention having my best friend continuing in his sponsoring me as a fully initiated Catholic. Katherine suggested to my dad, brothers, and sister-in-law that we do something special with my late mother’s wedding dress, so Lucy’s white baptismal garment was specially tailored using the fabric and features from that dress, which my dad had left preserved from the 70s. We invited my friend, Fr. Kevin, to celebrate the baptism, following the beautiful job he did with our wedding Mass. And Kevin, always one to bring eloquence and catechesis, provided beautiful teaching moments as he executed the Rite of Baptism. Chief among them, as we surrounded the baptismal font, Kevin unpacked the Romans 6 (see vv. 1-4 especially) theology of baptism, that we go down into the waters of Christ’s death and rise from the waters to new life in Christ, describing the holy water -- in the words of the Church fathers -- as a “liquid tomb.”
You get out of it what you put into it. It’s a cliched saying, often used to describe Mass, retreats, religion, etc., and plenty of other things, but it’s just true. The details described above involved foresight, discernment, and intentionality, and those qualities help to steer our hearts toward prayerful consideration of what baptism entails. Then, when we gathered our friends and family in the church on that day, such intentionality further drew our community into more engaged consideration of the grace of the Sacrament.
It makes me think of weddings, and how people often dread or avoid “Church weddings.” They feel that they’re too stodgy, constrained, obligatory, etc. Speaking just for myself, our “Church wedding” was important to us but also became a highlight of the “wedding weekend” experience for a lot of our guests, many of whom are not Catholic or do not attend Mass regularly, and that happened because of the intentionality of the music, the ritual, the worship aid, the homily, the family and friends serving as ministers, etc. I think the fact that we put as much or more energy into the Mass as we did into the wedding reception helped to preserve and strengthen the focus on the Sacrament and not just the open-bar party that followed. If people didn’t put thorough energy into their wedding receptions, they would probably feel constrained and obligatory, too!
The texts of the Church are seemingly inexhaustible sources of beauty. Catholic liturgy is often ridiculed for its rigidity, routine, formalism, etc., as perception can lead people to feel turned off by how we celebrate. However, there’s often unrecognized beauty in the texts of the Church, especially in the carefully written prayers of our liturgies. The prayers all draw carefully on Scripture and the rich Tradition of the faith to invite the faithful into dynamic, rich prayer. The syntax and word choice can be clunky, but I think my own tendency to zone out or simply not attentively listen is a greater obstacle than grammar or style.
In the Rite of Baptism, amid my dreamy-eyed gawking, I was struck especially my this prayer that followed the initial lighting of Lucy’s baptismal candle:
Parents and godparents,Immediately, I had an abstract image in my imagination of Lucy coming face to face with immense light. I don’t know what she looked like in this moment, but she was clothed in white. And this little girl, who can’t even crawl let alone walk, appeared in the eyes of my soul as a member of the elect excitedly going to meet her maker.
this light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly.
This child of yours has been enlightened by Christ.
He (she) is to walk always as a child of the light.
May he (she) keep the flame of faith alive in his (her) heart.
When the Lord comes, may he (she) go out to meet him
with all the saints in the heavenly kingdom.
The profundity of that image really floored me and drove home the gravity of marrying, having a child, and endeavoring to raise a family. As I thought about the baptism in the days leading up to it, I thought of Katherine and Lucy (and God-willing, future children) as the most concrete Kingdom-building my life has seen and will ever see. And this baptism, following on our marriage, is a first concrete step of our family’s work to lay the bricks that build the Kingdom and pave the roads to the fullness of Christ.
In that prayer, in that moment, God gave me a glimpse of what the point of all of this is -- why we bother to commit to another in love, to give of ourselves in parenthood, to bring a child to the water. And as I think of that image again, I realize that in that moment of beatific vision, I’d be standing right behind my daughter as we together reach our Providence. Can't wait.
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| Here's Katherine, Lucy, and I, with my grandmother's handmade woolen white blanket, hidden somewhere behind the immensity of my late mother's wedding dress, which now finds new life as our Masterton family's baptismal garment. |
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