A weekend of joy

I have just come back from a lovely weekend with my family in Wales for the baptism of my cousin's son, at which I officiated myself.

It was at my Aunt's wedding celebration in July that the conversation began. My cousin asked me whether I was able to come to the baptism that had been booked in at their local parish church. I then asked whether they would like me to do the service. I told them to have a word with their local priest and seek his permission and, after a little bit of admin and the necessary safeguarding things, I was allowed to officiate at the service.

First, I would like to thank Fr Nicholas of St Mary's Risca, for his permission to take the service and for his warm welcome to robe and sit in choir for the Parish Mass. He was not only a warm and friendly priest, but evidently a very prayerful priest whom it was a pleasure to watch celebrate the holy mysteries with deep faith and devotion and with a very thought-provoking sermon on the life of prayer.

And then my family arrived for the baptism. My Aunt very kindly brought me something to eat as I had to leave for the Mass before my cousin came back with some food. And then we went in.

It was very strange to stand and welcome people to a Church that I was in for only the first time myself and then we began the baptism liturgy. The Church in Wales liturgy of baptism is slightly different to that I am used to in the Church of England but there is a beautiful dialogue at the beginning of the service that goes like this:

What do you ask of the Church of God?

We ask that this child may be baptized.

I must say that I loved this part of the liturgy and might insert it into my services. 

In my sermon I talked about discovering what love really is when my daughter was born and the importance of showing a child how much they are loved, not just by us but also by God.

One of the godparents is a first-language Welsh speaker so I then addressed him in Welsh and told him that he has to show him the love of God but also teach him Welsh! I knew that there were a couple of Welsh-speakers in the congregation so I wanted to use a little Welsh so that they could hear their own language for at least a small part of the service. I don't speak it very fluently, but it is a language that I love and keep meaning to get more fluent in. Learning languages has always been a passion of mine and I love being able to speak to people in their own languages and so it was no different with Welsh! I managed to have a couple of conversations in Welsh at the party afterwards so that made me happy too! Anyway...

And so I baptised my first-cousin-once-removed, and his face lit up as the first drops of water hit his head. It was such a beautiful smile that I will never forget.

As I presented his baptism candle, I decided to say the words in Welsh:

Derbyniaist oleuni Crist; rhodia yn ei oleuni holl ddyddiau dy fywyd.

[You have received the light of Christ: walk in his light all the days of your life.]

It was a beautiful service and the joy of the occasion is still pouring out of my (often struggling) heart. I want to thank my family for allowing me the opportunity to do this. To offer my priestly ministry to my family is a great privilege because it nicely ties together the two parts of my identity: my belonging to the family but also my priesthood. The two can never really be completely separated so to be able to do both at the same time was a huge joy.

I certainly hope that this will not be the last of such occasions.