A Sunday of Contrasts

Our baptisms are moderately conservative affairs. I keep the old language about 'sin, the world, and the devil' and I even do the little gesture called the Ephphatha, making the sign of the Cross over the child's ears and lips, symbolising the newly-baptised soul's ears being opened to hear the Word and their mouth to speak it, which comes from the old Roman rite and which I so liked I adopted it. I've even been asked, occasionally, as I was today, to baptise a child who's wearing a traditional christening gown, but that's quite rare as most families now find their beloved baby doesn't fit the gown by the time they get around to organising the ceremony. But I've never been asked additionally to wrap the child in a white shawl before. The christening gown itself derives from the white robe in which a baptismal candidate was wrapped in the ancient rite after the baptism itself, signifying their clothing with Christ, and after the custom of baptising children naked fell into disapproval in the Western Church they would arrive at the ceremony already wearing it. I see that the old Roman Rite includes clothing with a shawl or somesuch, but also allows this to be commuted, as it were, to a white cloth placed on the child's head. The sense of this arrangement was revealed today when none of us could work out easily how to hold little Isabella so the shawl could be applied. 

Later in the afternoon it was our Spring Forest Church. I didn't know quite where we were going, so Julie the Sacristan led the small procession (including two dogs) to a local SSSI where we were surrounded by meadows and birdsong yet with the 21st century very audible in the form of the main road not far away. This is of course much less formal liturgy, but as yet hasn't attracted a single soul who is not already a member of some church community! Will more publicity make a difference?