I was present at two christenings in the past three weeks, both happy events as christenings should be for very many reasons. At the first one, in St. John's Church in Hudson, NH, I was close enough to see the little fellow smiling at Father Pierre as he approached to trace the Sign of the Cross on his forehead claiming him for Christ and welcome him into the church. Father smiled back at him and told all of those in the church what was happening. There was an audible reaction, joy filled laughter rose all around. I laughed and smiled myself. Who could resist?
At my own parish, St. Christopher's here in Nashua, a little girl was christened just last Sunday. I was in the loft with the choir at that Mass, and didn't get to see things up close. I did see the baby in her mother's arms, and saw her three little brothers standing close, curious and involved, trying to make sense of what was happening to their sister. I knew both parents and godparents, and that made the event more of a joy for me.
It was especially pleasing to look down and see a number of other little ones I knew, and whose christenings I had seen from the same lofty perch; to say a prayer for them and their parents and families, and godparents, and to hope the best for them as they "grew in wisdom, age and grace before God and Man."
The christening at St. Christopher's was interrupted for a few minutes when an elderly congregant fainted and an ambulance had to be called to take her to the hospital. As we waited I prayed she would be all right. At one point I looked to my side and saw another choir member the mother of four little ones, three boys and a girl just like the family below us, with her head bowed in prayer, too.
The woman is fine, I learned. The christening proceeded and Mass ended joyfully, the baby going home to her first party.
Since she is a church musician my wife and I are present at a lot of funerals where I help by singing with her. We both find each of these occasions joyful. Even in their sadness, I sense the presence of joy and gratitude among family and friends for the gift of the life of their loved one. Certainly it is a different kind of joy; heavier, alloyed with the grief of parting, complicated by all of the memories of life lived with someone who has gone ahead and waits for us. This is one of the legitimate reasons for the whole funeral rite, I suspect; to gather all of us who loved someone on the station platform, say goodbye, wish them well and, on the walk along the road we all travel to remember, console and be happy.
I joined Face Book a couple of months ago and after some few days of wondering what it is all about, I concluded that, after some minor complaints about the weather and "your team", it was about letting folks know what makes a person happy, what there is to celebrate in your life, your kid's lives, your school's...or your team's life. I see a lot of pictures of brand new babies, and not so brand new ones, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, and I read the odd mention of someone remembering a dead relative or spouse. (I'm sorry, I prefer the old word to the knew one "passed". I always think of gas or footballs when I hear it, and wonder whatever happened to dying.)
But that's probably the fault of the program. How can one deal with deep sadness, great faults or all of those other minor key problems and emotions which are common to our lot in a mere 524 characters? It can't be done. And, there are some truths, some things which we cannot bring ourselves to tell and share, though they are part of the "face" we show to the world; the part in the shadows known only to ourselves, our confessors...and God. Sometime we hope that God doesn't know and may even manage to convince ourselves He doesn't.
Don't get me wrong, here, I do like knowing all the good things about the people who tell me what is happening with them on my FB page. It helps me when I come across something that is like a glimpse into a place where joy never enters, a deep blackness, a roaring, a gehenna, that valley where "Moloch made his grove". There is a book recently published which is a journey through such a place by a young woman, Abby Johnson. She used to work at a Planned Parenthood facility in Texas, I think. One day she was asked to assist during an abortion, holding the ultra-sound device on the woman's while the doctor positioned his instrument on the baby to be aborted.
After that experience, she gradually came to the decision that she had to leave. She concluded it was wrong to do what she did. It was wrong to inflict pain on babies in the womb and to kill them. Her book is called "Un-Planned". It is too long a story for, and too hard a one, its darkness too deep, for a place like Face Book. The excerpt from the book's first chapter that I read reminded me of something I had read years ago about Dr. Mengele's laboratory at Auschwitz, and his practices on young children.
After he had finished with them, the children he had destroyed were thrown out and burned.
Ms. Johnson's words describe that kind of place, a place where joy never enters, where
Who should have been born
Wasn't,
Who should be mourned
Isn't.
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