Water Works

Recently I saw a photo of a former student of mine holding her little goddaughter. I love it when the legacy of care continues into the younger generations. It’s good that they pick up on it, just as their elders did. We need more of that care. As a celebrant of the sacrament of Baptism I am occasionally trusted to hold a child. I know that (especially) parents get "used to it"; but, wow! Holding and beholding a little one is a kind of Eucharistic Reception and Adoration! Such is the pool of miracles in which we wade.

When I teach about the sacraments, I often present a handout that lists the Church’s legal definitions of each of the seven sacraments.  Here’s how Canon Law defines Baptism:

…The gateway to the sacraments and necessary for salvation by actual reception or at least by desire, is validly conferred only by a washing of true water with the proper form of words.  Through baptism men and women are freed from sin, are reborn as children of God, and, configured to Christ by an indelible character, are incorporated into the Church. (CIC 849)

Gateway: a person cannot receive a sacrament unless he or she has first received Baptism.  This includes the sacrament of matrimony: if a baptized person marries a non-baptized person in the Church, the marriage is valid but not sacramental, because an unbaptized person cannot confer the sacrament of marriage.

Necessary for salvation: we can find evidence for this in the end of Mark’s Gospel (16:15-16) where Jesus hinges salvation on faith and baptism; at the end of Matthew’s He commands the apostles to baptize.  Baptism is the ordinary means to eternal life that our Lord and Savior entrusted to His Church.  God certainly reserves the right to work around it (and who are we to say otherwise?); but like any rule, it wouldn’t have been made in order for exceptions to abound.  God certainly takes account of a person who desires baptism but for whatever reason never actually receives it (especially the person who dies in the preparatory process, which used to happen more often when martyrdom was all the rage).  A family’s desire for baptism would apply to its infants and small children, although one ought not delay very long when baptism is readily available.  

Why haven't you scheduled my Baptism yet?

True water: nothing may be added, and no water-based liquid (e.g. Kool Aid, motor oil) can be used.  

Proper form of words: the “Trinitarian formula” that Jesus prescribes at His Ascension (Mt 28:18-20).

The canon goes on to list the effects of baptism:

Freedom from sin, both the original sin and, for adults, any personal sin committed before baptism.  The effects of sin remain: weakening of the will, darkening of the intellect, confusion from the passions.  Such is the lot of every son or daughter of Adam, but that’s why we rejoice in the gifts of Prayer, Word, and Sacrament that sustain us in making good moral choices, lest we lose our cherished freedom.  

Rebirth: the baptized become “in Christ, a new creature” (2 Cor 5:17).  Like our first birth, the grace of baptism is a gift, unexpected and unmerited.  By it we share in the relations of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, most notably as sons-by-grace in Him who is Son-by-Nature.  We get to call God our Father, Jesus our Brother, and the Holy Spirit our Advocate and Guide.  As baptized persons we can and should tap into these relations all the time.

How do we "tap into our relationship with the Trinity?"  Prayer; reflection on the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church; participation in the Liturgy; acts of charity...

An “indelible mark”: Baptism is a kind of "spiritual tattoo" that nothing can remove.  Even though mortal sin destroys charity within the heart, there remains an interior identification with God that His mercy and our repentance can restore: this we must never forget, though never take for granted either.  

Insertion into Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church: We become brothers and sisters to one another with the deepest and most enduring bond.  St. Paul designates as the “household of faith” (Gal 6:10) everyone who calls God Father and the Church Mother.  Fellow members of Christ are called to exercise fraternal charity and guidance toward one another.  Unfortunately this is something that we don’t often take as seriously as we could, but it is one of many responsibilities that accompany baptismal grace, along with the command to divine worship and obedience to the moral law.

For an interesting presentation on Jesus' Baptism, click here.

When God became flesh in Jesus, He did not have to undergo any sort of purification rite; but that’s what John’s baptism was.  By submitting to that ritual Our Lord identified most profoundly with sinful man, foreshadowed the plunge of His Passion and Death, and instituted Christian baptism as the ordinary way to share in the fruits of His life, death, and resurrection.  

Baptism starts the believer along a lifelong path of holiness and mission—getting to heaven and bringing along with us whoever we can find.  These are our marching orders, so let us begin!

Tony Bennett with Bill Evans: A Child Is Born (1976)

Sacramental Sponsorship: Supernatural Selection

My point of departure for this post is a blog post by Fr. Jay Toborowsky of the blog "Young Fogeys" on the subject of the selection and qualifications of a baptismal sponsor (Godparent).

I am not posting the article to dispute with its Reverend Author, nor would I offer my own experiences as a corrective to, or corroboration with, his experience and understanding.  As I see it, we are brother priests who face days that, I sadly note, many elder brother priests are glad to say are more behind them than ahead of them.

"Woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days." (Mt 24:19)

This much I can say with certainty: Fr. Toborowsky and all priests want people to grow in appreciation for the dignified role of the Godparent of a Catholic, and a fortiori, the Parent of a Catholic.  In practice, Godparents do not spend the same quality or quantity of time with children as their parents do.  While for various reasons a priest may refuse or defer authorization for a person to be a Godparent, he certainly can't do that for a person to be a parent.  That's God's call.  But the responsibilities of a parent are more grave and immediate, so the challenge is first to be issued to our parents (see image below).

Copyright whoever. It's a Michelin ad, so they can send me a couple of bucks for using their slogan.
Or free tires for life--that'll work.

The Church does not (cannot!) forbid non-practicing Catholics (or non-practicing anything) to be parents; and yet parents are charged to be the "first teachers in the practice of the faith...[and] the best of teachers" (Rite of Baptism).

We don't like to refuse Baptism to a child, though Church Law permits us to defer Baptism (Can. 868)  when the practice of the faith is non-existent--when the child doesn't currently inhabit a "village" that will raise it or a "culture" that will cultivate it.  I suspect that deferral is, in practice, not very common; that priests look for any reason (grasping at straws, even) to baptize.

Furthermore, we don't like to refuse anyone the recognition to be an Auxiliary Parent (to coin a fitting euphemism for godparent). The Romans used to say, "nemo dat quod non habet" (no one gives what he doesn't have), so how can we comfortably attest that a lapsed or weak Catholic will help to raise anything but the same (barring, of course, the grace of God who does far more than we can ever ask or imagine)?

The Church is not cruel, deferring or refusing just so people do what "we" want them to do, to toe the line.  (This creates a climate of tacit approval of laxity, anyhow, and we'd have to answer for that.)  But the Church must not abdicate her role as "mother and teacher" of the faithful.  Like it or not, that role puts priests in the position of enforcing rules that we did not make.  Rules regarding eligibility for sponsorship have in mind people's full religious, spiritual, moral, etceteral flourishing.  We don't want anyone to settle for any sort of mediocrity.

||:   I have to hold myself to the same standard.  Is it too high a standard?  That question, honestly, remains open for me.  Perhaps my lack of committal to high standards of belief and practice is wishy-washy.  Until all Catholics are practicing the Faith with greater devotion, I will encourage people to that devotion, granting permissions as often as possible and refusals as few as possible.  Will this only encourage lax and insincere identification with the Catholic Faith?   :||

Returning to the Source

The readings for this Christmastide Weekday deliver a one-two punch of humility.  My belligerence must be worn down somehow, and there is no better pugilist than the Lord Himself: "The LORD, your God, who goes before you, is the one who will fight for you, just as he acted with you before your very eyes in Egypt" (Dt 1:30).  

"What's to fight about, who's to fight against?"  Things as they are; me as I am.  Sometimes I spend a fair amount of energy wondering (read: sulking) about why The Shipwrack-Harvest isn't among the blogosphere's best.  Now let's not try to improve the situation, by writing daily, providing more links in articles, covering more timely and (gasp!) controversial topics (or for that matter, more personal, human- and divine-interest stories)!

Here as always, beating my sword into a plowshare (Is 2:4) is the best line of offense.  I will offend the devil, for starters, because he is hell-bent on my dissolution, and he's crafty enough to use something as silly as a blog to accomplish it.  "See!  See!  You can't handle everything on your plate the way it is, and you wanted to start a blog.  Now other areas of your ministry aren't as strong as they'd been, and..."

Oh, what about today's Scripture readings?

Well, there's the paradigmatic passage from Luke 4: Jesus enters the synagogue of Nazareth, this time to read and preach the prophet Isaiah (61:1-2).  Jesus reads the Word of God to the assembly, and "the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him" (Lk 4:20).  That's because He just read the Word of God, for which people have an insatiable hunger.  People may claim not to care for theological commentary and magisterial application, but these (especially the latter) are more than seasonings sprinkled on an otherwise nourishing dish.  Rather the Church's Tradition (which to some extent includes the history of theological gloss) and the Magisterium are staples of the faithful Catholic's diet just as much as Sacred Scripture.

If we were to extend this gastronomic metaphor a bit to say that Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium are like carbohydrates, protein, and fats--all very much necessary for spiritual health--we'd probably be going far afield of our current topic.  ("Dammit Jim--I'm a priest, not a dietician!")

The eyes looked intently; the shepherdless sheep were hungry for teaching (cf. Mk 6:34).  They hadn't suspected that Jesus would feed them Himself: "Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing."  You're looking at the Source of what you just heard.

Here's a case of God revealing Himself within human history with all the fanfare of carbon monoxide, or, as C. S. Lewis put it, slipping "clandestinely, behind enemy lines."  The Eternal Word speaks in human words, and now--what?--manifests in human flesh!

Now burn, new born to the world,	265
Doubled-naturèd name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;	270
Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fire hard-hurled.

(Hopkins, Wreck of the Deutschland, st. 34)

The Word of Love--it's not our bright idea, says John in his first letter: "We love God because he first loved us."  The secular arm of a humanist culture erects statues of itself on the boulevards; but we Christians find the wellsprings of salvation outside of ourselves, though the waters certainly flow therein.

What for the more subtle temptations to rely on unaided human strength?  Take, for example, the angst expressed above concerning this very blog.  I take this opportunity to reaffirm the Lord as the primary Motive and Content for Ship-Har.  With that plan of action, more eyes may look more intently...and maybe not in the form of "hits" on this site, but on Him.

Ahm In

At Mass this morning, one person's response to "The Body of Christ" sounded like "Ahm in" ("I'm in").

The sound of it, the thought of it, seized me for a moment.  Now there were a dozen or more people still in line, so I couldn't just go off into ecstasy right then.  Getting lost in thought isn't an unfamiliar voyage into unfamiliar territory for me!  But, as one of our Scripture profs used to say, "There's a homily in there somewhere!"  (Or a blog post, I suppose.  But blogs weren't around yet.)  So I wanted to keep the idea fresh.

She was receiving the Eucharist, the Body of Christ.  As a fully initiated Catholic she certainly is a member of Christ's Mystical Body.  The recipient of Holy Communion is affirming both dimensions of Christ's Body: two, for the price of One.

The expression Amen derives from the Hebrew word 'emet meaning "truth."  To say "Amen," then, is to affirm the truth.  It does not make truth out of falsehood (for not even God can do that), but it does perfect the one who consciously, freely, and repeatedly assents to a reality outside of himself.

Apud te est fons vitae, et in lumine tuo videbimus lumen (Ps 36:10)

What does the communicant affirm in receiving "the Body of Christ"?  Everything: in terms of the Church's Catechism, we affirm--personally and communally--right doctrine, right worship, right living, and right praying.  The public act of receiving Holy Communion suggests that the recipient is standing (kneeling!) with the Church.  If not, then the person must first "examine himself" (1 Cor 11:28) before approaching the altar.  In nuptial parlance: drop your bouquet, run out of the church (don't mind everyone quizzically looking at you, wondering if there'll still be a reception), and clarify the relationship before declaring your vows.

Now a person's intellectual and moral difficulties--even ten thousand of them--do not equal one doubt (said Cardinal Newman).  Everyone is involved in some sort of struggle, or failure to demonstrate precise correspondence of beliefs and actions.  But the intentional reservation of one's "better judgment" over against the Church is risky--it's far more than risky.  A prompt and earnest beginning to resolve our difficulties always seems appropriate.

All, of course, in the interest of our full investment of self in the Catholic Enterprise, better known as the Body of Christ.  Can I hear an "Ahm in?"

The moment of truth, hands down