Theological Notebook/Personal: On the Baptism of Sophia Eileen

[novak]

My niece Sophia, born this past April, was baptized on Sunday the 8th of July. She recieved her first sacrament. One day this will or will not be recognized as one of the most important days of her life. There was a sacrament: an invisible sign of an invisible reality. An act of grace that is efficacious in and of itself, with or without co-

Comments

[frey_at_last]

This is a beautiful post, thanks for sharing. You're right that it doesn't depend on feeling, whether forced or spontaneous -- but that baptism sounds about right for me... in my life at least God often manifests Himself more naturally in rough and tumble familial havoc than in silence and bells, anyway! :)

I really like your nieces' names, but I can't help but feel for Haley. Her sisters are invisible lofty grace and wisdom, and she only gets to be a comet!

[novak]

Thanks, K.

Well, it seems a bit of a let-down at first, with the other two both being named - in one way of looking at it - for one of the Triune Persons, with both Grace and Sophia being possible names of the Spirit and not just acts or attributes of Her. (Although the difference between an act, attribute and the actual Person of God is an increasingly-tricky question itself....) But "Haley Jennifer," if you go back to the Norse and Cornish roots of the names, might be translated as "the Hero Guinevere," so if you're into Arthurian literature (maybe depending on the version), that's not a bad name at all....

[friede]

It's 6.30 AM and I ought not be awake, and thus can muster up nothing more coherent than: this, THIS is why I am glad of you.

You may not be a technical genius, but you recorded the better part.
(which totally includes the πνευμα joke, IMHO)

[novak]

Heh. Thanks. But that my three years of Greek training has come to the end of making fart jokes is really just so sad....

[friede]

Hey, it worked for Laurence Sterne and Henry Fielding.