A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. Martha had a sister named Mary who seated herself at the feet of the Lord and listened to his words. Martha, on the other hand, was busy with all the details of hospitality, came to Jesus and said to him, Lord, aren't you concerned that my sister has left me all alone to do all the household tasks? Tell her to help me.
That's a familiar theme, isn't it? The lord in reply said to Martha, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things. Notice these words, only one thing is required. Required. Mary has chosen the better part, and she will not be deprived of it.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. There's much I would like to say as usual about many things, but right on my mind and has been since Sunday was a rare experience for me, a great honor, a privilege, and believe me, the occasion for considerable meditation, which means thinking. And that was the baptism that I was privileged to celebrate here, Sunday afternoon. Now what it made what made it especially a little unusual was, first of all, the baby did a lot of crying, and I don't usually allow that at my baptisms.
But that baby certainly knew had vocal cords. So I invited the parents to thank the Lord that they had a good baby who had a good voice, because I appreciate a good voice. I mean a good loud strident one that makes the welcome ring. The second thing was that we had four generations represented at that right there. Four generations.
Now here is what struck me. At the end of the ceremony, bapt you all remember this when you were baptized. The priest says to this little baby that's just been bapt been born practically, just a few weeks old. You've given it a you baptize it, of course. I don't mean of course.
That's the main main thing you're there for. But you put a little white garment around its neck. Some babies don't like that at all, they think you're gonna hang them I guess. And you say, Carry this garment through your life unsullied, as clean, and these are very fresh brand new little garments. Absolutely hygienic.
And then you give the the baby or somebody, most babies aren't, you know, up to holding a good candle, so you give it to one of the godparents or somebody. You light the candle from the big pastoral Easter candle, then you say, carry this light through your life so that when you will come to the footsteps or something like that of the Lord, he will welcome you into your kingdom. Notice you're saying that to a baby that's just been born. And I had four generations of people. Here is the beginning of life, and at the other end you have the the grandparent the great grandparent or great great grandparent who is, you know, getting one foot on the other side.
And in this moment, more than any other sacrament, I'm just being for my own self because I was doing this meditation, you see. You can't meditate for anybody else. You you have really a a very strong conviction and persuasion about eternity. Now eternity means timelessness. It means something without an end.
And that's what they did here's this little baby just beginning life, and you say, look, take this light and become a lucifer, a carrier of the light. Carry this garment through your life unsullied. And now you're saying, now you're coming into the presence of the lord at the end of your life. And the baby's scarcely been born. And on the other hand, you have the four three other generations step by step, heading not into eternity eternity, we're all living in eternity.
Do you ever think about that? We are living in eternity. And most of us, when we look back upon our forty five or fifty years, speaking for myself, why the you wonder where, as we say, time has gone. Well remember, time is not a thing at all, any more than space is, or any more than society is. It's an idea or concept.
And the thought struck me here, know, we are what do we do between the time that we're at we get we're given the candle and putting the and a white garment is put on us until we're receiving the last anointing and we're traipsing off, well, into the next world, which is really not the next world, but the world in which we are in now. Because that's what baptism does. It puts the baby into an entirely new world. It's it's I did loathe this word initiation. That degrades baptism into the order of becoming a k s e or the daughter of the revolution or a masonic lady or whatever you enjoy or the or or your fraternity or your sorority.
Baptism isn't initiation, it's a transformation. And I'm sure you remember your old biology days when we talked about a complete metamorphosis. You know, the the bullfrog's the example of it. Well, this is more than a complete metamorphosis. It's a completely new life that comes with baptism.
And it's the life that were to live between the little baby taking his candle and the white garment and getting the last rites on its deathbed. And as far as the church is concerned, it's almost present tense. And folks, when you think about it, in terms of let us say an Egyptian pyramid, or going back to some of the ancient ruins in the Mediterranean Sea, or going even farther east into the Euphrates Valley, what is a seventy five or an eighty year life amount to? It's not a pebble on the sea on the beach. It's it's so infinitesimal, and yet it's all we have.
And the point that struck me, and this is my concluding remark, we live it day by day. You don't live it by seventy years. You don't live it by thirty five years. You don't live it as one of our young men did when he was en route to Frostburg and got killed at about 20. You don't live it in years.
You don't live it in months. You don't live it in weeks. You don't live it in days. You live it by the hour, by the minute. In other words, present tense.
It's the only reality. The only reality. And there comes the question, what do you do with it? Do you grasp it as the reality it is, or are you living in the past, or are you living in the future? That's nonsense to live in either one of them.
The only reality is the present. And when that little baby is given the candle and the garment, it's given present tense. Take this and bear it. And that's what we should think about every single day when we put our two feet on the floor when we get out of bed. That this is another day.
This is that I have to live. I am already in eternity. Now what am I going to do with it? My answer is live it for God. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit.
Amen.