Easter the word means dawn, the hour of Jesus’ resurrection, the first light of a new promise that there is a road through death to life and Jesus walked it. Easter is springtime, white lilies, grass greening, warming days, new fire spreading, Christians’ candles lighting up the night. Easter is the slow dawning in each of us that love is stronger than any other energy and ours to give as each other’s daily bread.
Baptism
by Brett Johnson
In high school you had to drag me to church. My mother hated to do that, so on Sunday mornings I bided my time, trying to outwait her. Inevitably she started. “Okay, Brett, you should take your shower; we’re going to church.”
Excuses such as “I’m too old to be forced to go” and “I can decide for myself” passed over my mother like mist on a breeze. She looked at me with the determination of a sailor in a storm and said, “You can give one hour to God.” Like waves against her hull, I protested until Dad intervened and I went.
When the time came for me to leave for college, I couldn’t wait. Among my many new freedoms, I could decide whether or not to attend church.
I have no major quarrels with the Catholic Church. I don’t refuse to attend because of Rome’s politics. It’s just that when I’m at Mass, I think of everything but what’s happening in front of me.
My mind wanders through the readings, I fidget during the presentation of the gifts and daydream through the prayers after Communion. For some reason, I tune out in an almost miraculous hypnosis. Like people with the stigmata, I’m afflicted with holy narcolepsy. So in college I started sleeping in my bed on Sunday mornings instead of in the pew.
I was becoming part of that large and shameless group — the lapsed Catholic. However, I still went to church on Christmas, Easter, and some holy days (if I remembered them). Then, last Easter I found more meaning in church.
It was the first Easter I was away from home, missing the annual gathering of family and friends. A job kept me on campus during the holiday, but I made sure to attend Mass that morning. Going to Mass on this most important day of the religious year gave me a way to connect with my family. In some way, I still felt I was going out of duty rather than devotion.
Men and women in their best outfits crammed the cathedral-like church. I wondered how many of us came together just to fulfill a minimum obligation. I was ushered to a seat three rows from the back and submerged in dark suits, white dresses, and fresh hair spray.
Only by stretching above shoulders and heads, could I glimpse the altar that seemed leagues away. I identified a priest and one, maybe two, altar persons. The voice on the microphone gurgled in an inaudible echo. My mind wandered. I studied the shimmer of the stained glass, re-read the bulletin, and looked at feet.
I glanced up when the presider introduced an Ecuadoran priest who was going to baptize a child. Between the silhouettes of heads I spied this priest, his brown face smooth and young, his nose curled into a fat hook. He spoke a labored brand of English with a heavy Spanish accent. He faltered as he was handed the infant, cradling it awkwardly.
The priest stood with the baby near a tank of water that rested like low tide on the altar. When he began the ceremony, he might as well have been speaking from underwater. The reverberation from the hall and his accented faltering speech rendered him unintelligible. However, the congregation hushed, straining to hear his halting words.
When the priest held the baby over the water, I struggled to listen. I feared he might drop the child. “Eye-bap-tyzz youh een thee nahme of the Father —” followed by silence. Then the splash of the child against the water. Suddenly a wail filled the church. “And zee Son.” Again a splash! “And the Ho-lee Spee-rit.” A third time the priest dunked the child, finishing the baptism flawlessly.
Next, the father held the baby up over his head, the tiny figure kicking its legs and arms like a marionette. All eyes focused on this infant and I was startled. The people applauded for this wet, crying, naked, new Catholic. And I realized I had just been caught up in a holy moment — a sacrament.
I was eight years old when I was baptized. An odd age, but my dad had just remarried and my new mother told me, “Catholics have more fun.” So I was baptized. My baptism is the first experience of church I remember. That Easter Mass reminded me of that day, my own baptism.
It took the cry of a baby for me to connect with a deeper meaning of church. My mother’s words of giving an hour for God came to mind. I was glad to be Catholic.
Now back to my daydreams.