A CHILD OF GOD

Wednesday after the Third Sunday in Lent

It had not been a hard labor (I say, who has no practical idea how to distinguish a “hard labor” from a—uh—“not so hard labor”) but had been a lengthy one. The new-born child was reportedly healthy. I had been to the hospital two days before, when the mother had first gone in, and liberally splashed holy water everywhere—even two nurses had come into the room and asked for a blessing.

Now, the child was born—momma, baby and daddy all safe—and I announced to the congregation at Sunday’s High Mass that I’d be going to the hospital afterward to pray and bless some more. A number of people asked me at the door after Mass if they could come along, so a caravan formed. Altogether more than a dozen of us from St Mary’s crowded into the elevator. When we got into the room, all was smiles: warm greetings and hugs, jokes, laughter and kisses. The proud father took his new daughter and laid her in my arms. I tried to keep the same expression on my face, but I don’t know how well I succeeded. I was looking at the Ugliest Baby which had ever been born.

I did the prayers and blessings and thanksgiving from the priests’ ritual book, but was vaguely aware, as the child was passed from person to person, that I wasn’t the only person surprised by the Ugly Baby. I kept glancing up from my book at the parents. They were, thankfully, unaware of anything except that their new daughter was the Most Beautiful Daughter born since daughters have been born and they were grateful to God for her.

When all the cooing was over and the prayers concluded, there was more kissing and laughter and we departed in peace. Chatter continued until we got into the elevator, when an uncomfortable silence descended on our “party.” Finally as the elevator descended, someone said, “I dunno, maybe it’s just me but—uh—” He paused too long.

“Were you gonna say something about how ugly that child was?” said somebody else.

At that, all of us, me included, started laughing. It was that nervous sort of laughter that comes when somebody says out loud what everybody is thinking but is too afraid to say. There was general agreement and the uncomfortable snickering faded. I knew I had to say something—something that acknowledged the truth of what was said, but showed us all a way out of how we were feeling and pointed beyond. These are the moments a priest earns his salary.

“Y’know, whatever anybody else thinks, that girl is the most beautiful thing her parents have ever seen.” By the time she was baptized a few months later, all the rest of us came to share her parents’ opinion.

The Catechism teaches us that when we were baptized, we were made “a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.” There’s a lot of meaning packed into those phrases, but only a few things I want to consider with you for a minute. Most basic is this: it says “…in baptism, I was made…” We are not members of Christ and children of God because we decided to be. In the Sacraments, God acts. The idea that you and I are Christians because we believe in Christ is a foreign one to the Prayer Book. Our faith is essential, but it comes to us from God, a gift of His Grace. We are Christians because we are baptized—not because we believe (if we deny the faith and turn from Christ and go to Vegas where we lose ourselves “in riotous living,” we don’t cease to be Christians—we’re just bad and foolish ones). You are a Christian because God wants you to be one. “You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen You,” He says.

Because we are Christians, we are “children of God.” This is so widely accepted nowadays—it’s moved so deeply into the bowels of our language—that we forget Jesus had to teach His disciples over and over again that God was their Father. Most pious Jews of His day knew God was the Creator, the Lord and Ruler of the Universe, the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but it never occurred to them that God was their Father, too. It implied a relationship of too much intimacy. God was doubtless the Father of Israel, the chosen People, but He wasn’t the Father of Billy and Nancy and Susan.

When Jesus taught His followers to call God Father—“Abba” (even more shocking—“Daddy”, a child’s word)—and to address Him in prayer as “Our Father” (in Greek and Latin, this great prayer begins Pater Hemon, Pater Noster—the very first word is “Father”) people were shocked. This brought God too close. With that one word Jesus challenged His disciples to build a personal relationship with God in their hearts and minds.

Jesus wants us to know God as our Father so we’ll grasp—fully, in heart and mind—that our relationship with God is built on one single fact: God loves us. He loves you. In spite of how it sometimes feels, in spite of everything that happens to you, Jesus insists on one unshakable truth: God loves you. St Augustine says His love for us is so personal and profound that if only one of us had ever sinned, if all the rest of us remained perfect Sons and Daughters of God, God would still have been born, still suffered and still died, to redeem the one who had strayed.

When we pray, we need to have this as our solid conviction. We are loved. As a child of God you can stutter your love in the most inept of ways or utter it in syllables of poetic beauty, and it’s the same to Him. He is continually molding us to make our souls capable of receiving His love and offering our love to Him. Prayer, one of the foundations of our Lent, builds on this certainty: you are a child of God, a Son or Daughter of the King, and He loves you. He is Father to some of the Ugliest children around—and He rejoices in every one of them.