A Baptismal Address

 

How very much life resembles a single day. At our birth, the sun rises; at our death, it sets. In the beginning, our existence is like a lake in which the morning sun is reflected; at the end, like a lake mirroring the evening sun. And the life that lies between these two boundaries is like a lake whose waves are stirred by storm.

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The sun of your life now inclines toward its setting, and your sunrise is past. You now approach the dawn of another world. But here, in this world, God has given you a child— and above him hovers a rosy morning twilight. Upon him, the sun of earthly life begins to rise.

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In this child still rest, in the womb of time, both dark and bright destinies. The tender cares of a mother’s love sway his golden morning.  But you have known it yourselves: the years fly like arrows. Before you are aware, the morning’s golden roses have faded, and the labor and struggle of life begins. And is it not also the evening of life for that being whose dawn has only just broken?

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What was it, then, that upheld you in the toil and battle of life? What renewed your courage with each morning seed? What taught you to be temperate in joy, and steadfast in misfortune? What prepared for you bright and beautiful hours? What gave your life its substance, its worth, its meaning? What is the reason you do not fear death, but go gladly and joyfully toward the evening of life?

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All this was wrought and fulfilled in you by a draught from that well from which Jesus drew on the road— the one He spoke of to the Samaritan woman. That draught of water becomes in us a spring of living grace, welling up into eternal life.

Your parents brought you, even as children, to the keeper of that well—to Jesus— that He might bless you for your whole life. And Jesus gave you, throughout your days, the living water: the blessed, the enduring and nourishing, the steadfast and courageous water of life. He left it with you as a living gift.

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Let everything pass through the fields of your heart and life. Every blessing of life, up to this very day, had to take its path through Christ, the mediator between our innermost prayers and God. Even this living blessing of your children— those who already walk with strong steps toward the midday sun of life— and this child, who has scarcely greeted the morning. All, all comes from the heavenly Father and is given to us only through Jesus, His Son.

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Therefore, all these blessings that have come to you shall be granted in even greater measure to this young bud on the old tree of life. This child shall be equipped for the struggle of life in the same way you were equipped when you yourselves were children. A new sunrise shall be secured for him when the sun of earthly life, which now rises over him, begins to set.

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Therefore, this child of yours shall be carried by your praying, loving, and friendly hands to Jesus, who sits by Jacob’s well and gives the water of life. Jesus, the Prince of Life, shall lay His hands upon this tender head, and may it be consecrated and entrusted to a life of noble struggle, to a life full of love, and to a life that blossoms in the radiance of divine truth and knowledge.

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Therefore, we shall baptize this little child in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as Jesus Christ commanded us to baptize. We shall baptize it with the baptism by which we ourselves were baptized— in the faith in which our fathers died, in the faith whose banner of victory is unfurled across the whole world.

But first, confess once more this faith yourselves: let it rise from your hearts to your lips, and from there to the throne of the Almighty Father.

 

Do you believe in God, the Father? Do you believe in Jesus, the Son? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Do you promise and vow to plant this faith in true devotion within this your child  Then I baptize you— in the name of the Father, Amen— the Son, and the Holy Spirit!