A Letter to Emma and Henry

 Dearest Emma and Henry:

This is a very special morning. For you, for our family and friends, for these witnesses here today and for the life of the Church. I have been blessed to baptize your siblings and after a long wait now you! It occurred to me that the candidates when they are young like you don’t really understand what is going on and while your parents and godparents are superb!, maybe someday you will enjoy this letter as your own faith develops.

I would like to tell you a story, well I would like to tell you many stories, but just this one favorite this morning which will hopefully mean something to you someday and even remind you of your baptism in this most beautiful setting.

A young boy was walking through his town when he came upon a sculptor banging and chipping at a piece of marble. It was a large slab of rock and the boy wondered why all the effort?

A few weeks later this same boy wandered down this same road and was caught up short when he saw in the spot where the marble had been, a gleaming majestic statue of a lion. He was stunned and amazed!

He asked the sculptor How did you know there was a lion inside the marble?

We can all imagine different answers but for today I am imagining that the sculptor simply smiled and invited the boy to touch and feel. This may have been the beginning of the formation of the boy’s imagination, a kind of seeing by the heart. Just as today you are invited to touch and feel the water and the aroma of chrism!

This is one of the stories which came to me as I pondered what to say at your baptisms. 

In fact, there are many tellings of this story and it is often attributed to Michelangelo. Most versions reveal a lion but others reveal an angel and still others call us to the Pieta wherein Michelangelo saw a mother holding her son in a giant slab of marble. All of these images cause wonder and some even joy, some great sadness.

On the one hand the story celebrates wonder of childhood which the Gospel of Mark has been highlighting for a few weeks now. Jesus holds up the child much as I will lift you up soon, not only as welcome to the newest members of the Body of Christ but as beautiful children of God formed in Her image. 

On the other hand, or on another hand, I wonder whether the boy is all of us and the sculptor is God who knows us in the womb, who knows us each by name, and who loves us into being. I believe that while we may not all become lions we might all become angels and messengers and disciples to spread God’s love. 

In short order we will ground this sacramental moment in the renewal of our covenant with God. This baptismal covenant has always felt to me like a breaking open of the entire marble of God’s creation in order for the light and love to get in and touch each aspect each member.

Today is a kind of unveiling of the artwork of God which is you! It is also a sacramental moment when we use water and the chrism oil to cause the entire body of God’s portfolio of art work to glisten with glory. Look around you at the angels and lions which have been formed and blessed by the Holy Spirit.

Today you are marked as Christ’s own forever. Christ lives in you and is mystically chiseling and carving you into the most glorious human beings. 

And so as you come to understand this forming by God, by love and by grace, as the tools of an Artist, may you also come to understand the answers to the boy’s question. 

How did God know that you would emerge from a something huge, unknown and undefined? It is a Mystery and it is a certainty. God sees you and knows you because God loves you … always. God will always celebrate your infinite preciousness.

May you always know this eternal love at work in your lives. May you always know mine for you also, 

Love always, Marmee