A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus got into a boat. Of course, this is on the Lake Of Galilee. And his disciples followed him into the boat. Without warning, a violent storm came up on the lake, not an unusual situation.
And the boat began to be swamped by the waves. Jesus was sleeping soundly. So, the disciples made their way towards him and woke him up. Lord, save us. We are lost.
Jesus said to them, where is your courage? How little faith you have? Then he stood up in the boat and took the winds and the sea to test. Complete calm ensued. The disciples were dumbfounded.
What sort of man is this? They said, that even the winds and the sea obeyed him. And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. It has fallen to my lot, happy or otherwise, not to function often as the celebrant in baptism.
But But Sunday, I had that very wonderful experience. And when I say that, I mean it. To me, to be to be this the celebrant because it's a it's a situation of tremendous joy where this tiny little child barely born is brought in here and transformed into something very different from what it was. Too often, we talk about baptism as an initiation as an initiatory, right? Of course, it is that but he gods, it's much more than that.
It it it's a transformation. It's a metamorphosis. It's a complete metamorphosis. I can't use language strong enough. Dostoevsky has a remarkable, in my opinion, sentence in in his novel called The Possessed, where a child is born and the father says that the looking at his child, he says it's a great mystery that we cannot possibly grasp.
I agree to that. I think most mothers and fathers agree to it. When, lo and behold you, when they were just two, they now become three. And when they look at that third party and say, we produced that, I agree with Doyskayevsky. That is ungraspable and truly a mystery.
But then when you look at this other thing, when this human being in the natural order is now transformed by baptism into the mystical body of Christ to made a bit to make the salvation is now open to it. He admit the sacraments are available to carry him or her through life. This is something totally different from what that little baby was when it came into this church. Now, towards the end of the after the baptism itself, you give the the the grand the the godparent grandparents, the grandparents, of course, are too nervous. They couldn't hold a candle.
So, you give it to the godparents in lieu of the fact that that the infant baby is not capable yet of holding a candle for the most part. And this prayer is said, parents and godparents, and that candle that you give the little baby is lighted from the Paschal candle, which is the symbol of the our resurrected lord, that this child now has been brought into the light of Christ. So you take the light from the paschal candle on a little candle and you give it to the godparents or to the parents. And you say, parents and godparents, the light this light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly. You're talking to the little kid, the baby.
This child of yours has been enlightened now by Christ. He or she is to walk always as a child of light. May he or she keep the flame of faith alive in his or her heart. Now, notice this. Here you're talking to little baby.
It isn't more than a few days old or a few weeks. When the lord may he or she go out to meet him with all the saints of the heavenly kingdom. Now, the the the thought that struck me Sunday when I was at to perform this baptism. Here you have this tiny child barely born, brought in here, and already the church already the church is saying, look, I hope you make it. We're giving you the light of Christ, and I hope you carry it without it being dimmed.
And previous to that, you put a little garment on the child, a white garment. But now you tell the child that that you hope it will carry this light on dim to its life and you are now already supposing its death. You hardly been born. You see, time evaporates because here on Sunday, we we may have the baptism. Monday morning, we have a funeral.
And Monday evening, we may have a wedding. Just put those three things together and look what happens to time. Inevitably, that little baby will have some kind of growth. More years of of greater or less number. But the day will come when it will meet its lord.
And you see, here's the church. The the church of Jesus Christ, 2,000 years old. What one lifetime? So that the church is in in welcoming this newborn child, newborn into this world is now welcoming this newborn child into the the kingdom of Jesus Christ, into the community of saints, into the mystical body of Jesus Christ. That's that's the essence of the thing.
You can't say more than that. And yet, right then and there, the church is saying, look, you are destined to die, but that's not the end. You're destined to meet your lord. So carry this light and bear this garment immaculately. I don't know.
I was very much impressed by that service. I always am. I've done very few baptisms in my career, very few. And I never never failed to be deeply moved by because here in a you have a vision of time and eternity. The infant and the adult, here you have the all the joy of new life and you say it's to meet god, we call that death.
Whereas, it's actually the fullness of In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen.