Whenever
I come to baptize, my heart goes back to the first parish I served as a deacon,
then priest, where my first baptisms and so many more were. There, like here, the font was near the door,
a beautiful reminder that it is by baptism that we enter the church, like a
door, and it was under a beautiful stained glass window of Jesus inviting
children to come to him, to be embraced and to be blessed. Most of our baptisms there were outside of
Mass so I was able to use that gospel each time. I would point them to the window, that I hope
you can paint in your minds, and proclaim that this moment too, this beautiful
sacramental moment of baptism, performs exactly what happened in that window
(and so much more besides): a child is brought to Jesus for embrace, for
blessing.
I would
point out, though, that as iconic as this moment of being brought to Jesus for
embrace is, it’s not their first and it can’t be their life. In their families, the first places in which
they encounter the love and nurture that we find most fully in God, they have
truly been brought to Jesus. Throughout
their lives, they will continue to first be brought to Jesus, and then come to
him themselves, or, better, led by the movement of the Spirit within them. As soon as baptism is done, we start looking
forward to first communion. In my old
church, the altar was at the opposite of the space from the font and door, so
we’d process there at the end of the baptism service for the final blessing to
help make that point. We look forward
too to the child coming to Jesus for embrace and blessing in reconciliation, in
confirmation and maybe someday in marriage, ordination or profession of
religious vows.
As well
as those big moments of infusions of grace into our lives sacramentally, I’d
talk about the vital importance of coming to Jesus in prayer. Children can start truly praying long before
they can memorize written prayers. We
talk about the Spirit’s prayers as being sighs, and if we want to get to verbal
prayers, I think the only four words you really need to have a pretty rounded Christian
prayer life are please, sorry, thank you and wow. When I would talk to all of those families
about prayer, I wonder how many of them would think about the kinds of prayers
we hear about in the readings today.
I wonder
if they’d have thought of Moses desperately praying because his people, so
recently escaped from Pharaoh, were attacked by the Amalekites. I wonder if they’d have thought of Moses
weary from raising hands in prayer. I
wonder if they’d have thought of prayer that doesn’t erase the Amalekite threat
with a divine snap of the finger, but strengthens the Israelites to engage them
themselves. It’s not a nice sweet fluffy
picture of prayer like the image of coming to Jesus for a hug I just tried to
paint. But it’s not just a relic of a
bygone age. It’s how prayer often is for
us.
I wonder
if they’d have thought of the story Jesus paints with his words. A story of a widow, alone, defenseless, and
wronged, the victim of some unnamed injustice, and ignored by the very judge
who has meant to secure her rights. Now,
Jesus doesn’t say that God is just like that judge, who doesn’t respect humans
and who only acts out of fear. But, I
think we do know that feeling of crying out in prayer and feeling unheard. “Will he be slow?” Jesus asks. Our experience often is yes.
And I’m
not talking about those prayers which well up from pride or selfishness, like
my prayers last night for my Fighting Irish to win, or someone’s prayer to win
the lotto. No, I’m thinking of when we
pray for someone’s recovery from illness, and it doesn’t happen; or when we
pray to be free of some sin, and we keep falling back into it; or when we for peace
and justice, and we turn on the news to hear of more Amalekites and judges who
lack respect.
It’s at
times like this that I want to turn our gaze to the image which is over our
font here. Not Jesus welcoming children,
but the child Jesus, the Holy Infant.
That’s God’s answer to prayer.
Not the dramatic flash that a big part of me wants. No, the fullness of majesty present in infant
fragility. God answers prayer humanely;
and what the incarnation teaches us is that that doesn’t mean he doesn’t answer
prayer divinely, there’s nothing authentically human which is incompatible with
divinity. God answers prayer not just humanely,
but infantinely. It’s in the nature of
an infant to grow, sometimes it might seem rather fast, but really rather
slowly compared with how fast we’d like justice and peace and healing to
come. That’s what God’s answer to prayer
looks like: human, frail, in need of our help, tiring, beautiful.
This
Paschal candle, first lit with the new flame of Easter at the Vigil, proclaims
Christ’s resurrection. It shines by the font,
and it shines at the head of every casket at every funeral. In times of the greatest joy and of the
greatest sorrow, the same light shines, proclaiming Christ’s victory over
death, that all that threatens life will eventually pass away, and we hope to
be left, saints among saints in the heavenly throng.
The
light is the same. May the fervor of our
prayer be the same. Now, we lift up in
prayer especially Tyler James, his parents and godparents, and all of us, as we
pledge to walk with them this pilgrimage of life. And not just those of us here present pray;
we call upon all the angels and saints to join us in prayer, as we sing
together…. [Litany follows]
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