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a baptism anniversary: the third moment

9 Comments

One year ago today, we baptized our first child.  One, two, three plunges of a wriggling baby into the waters of new life. Not just a symbolic act, but a sacramental transformation that forever changed his relationship to us, to the Church, to God.

Today I’ve been reflecting on what it means to live out a sacrament – the idea of the “third moment” of sacraments.

The first moment is the preparation (the baptism class, the marriage prep).

The second moment is the celebration (the immersion in water, the giving of vows).

And the third moment is the living out of the sacrament (as the newly baptized or the newly married). The third moment involves the individual’s ongoing relationship with God and the community’s ongoing relationship with the individual.

When I speak to pastors and ministers about young adult ministry, I encourage them to consider how their parishes and congregations live out the third moment of sacraments like baptism or marriage.

Some parishes have sponsor couples for marriage or baptism that keep in touch with the newlyweds or new parents throughout the next year or two, calling them at several points to hear how things are going and invite them to get involved in the life of the congregation.

Other churches host pot-luck gatherings for all the couples who have been married or parents who have brought their children to be baptized in the past year. It’s a chance to reconnect, share their stories, and meet others in the same stage of life.

Churches need to help people live out the third moment of sacraments through a growing relationship with God. The sacrament is the invitation to journey one step deeper into what it means to follow Christ and to live a life of faith. Because it is through sacraments that we encounter the living God. And our relationship with God and with the Church is forever changed.

Sacraments are about relationships. We are baptized, and we become part of the fellowship of believers. We receive communion, and we are invited to share at Christ’s table. We marry, and we enter into a covenant of commitment with our spouse and with God.

Life is never the same.

Living out the third moment of a sacrament like baptism takes small steps.

Each Sunday we take our son back to the church where he was baptized. We bless him with holy water from the same font, and I remind him that this pool of water was where he began as a follower of Christ. We pray with him when he wakes, when he eats, and when he sleeps, so that he will come to learn the rhythms of a life of prayer.

We also live out the third moment of his baptism by involving him more and more with the life of the Christian community into which he entered one year ago today.

We build friendships in our parish. We get involved with church committees and serve as liturgical ministers. We try to give back to the community that nurtures us, and we try to model for our child what it will mean for him to grow into the Church.

Today we celebrated his baptismal anniversary by lighting his baptismal candle and telling the story of his sacrament.

We took a long family walk in the warm fall evening. We talked about ways we will continue to celebrate his baptismal day as he gets older: with a special dessert, with a visit to the church to see the baptismal font, with special prayers.

I found this prayer online with no attribution to the author, so please let me know if you discover its origin. A beautiful way to celebrate the third moment of a baptism!

Baptism Anniversary Prayer

Remember this, Name.
You have been washed
In the saving waters of baptism
And anointed with holy oil.
Place on your head and in your heart
The sign of the cross of salvation.

Trace the sign of the cross on the child’s head and heart.

Loving God,
You created all the people of the world,
And you know each of us by name.
We thank you for N.,
Who celebrates the anniversary of her baptism.
Bless her with your love and friendship
That she may grow in wisdom, knowledge, and grace.
May she love her family always
And be ever faithful to her friends.
Grant this through Christ our Lord.

R. Amen

Place your hands on the child’s head or shoulders.

May God, in whose presence our ancestors walked, bless you.
 Amen.
May God, who has been your shepherd from birth until now, keep you.
 Amen.
May God, who saves you from all harm, give you peace. 
Amen.

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Comments

  1. Louise says

    1 October 2015 at 4:02 am

    The Church has given an opportunity to gain a plenary indulgence if one renews the baptismal promises on that day.

    A partial indulgence is granted to the faithful, who renew their baptismal promises according to formula in use; but a plenary indulgence is granted, if this is done either: 1) in the celebration of the Paschal Vigil or 2) on the anniversary of one’s baptism.

    https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/prayers/view.cfm?id=1094

    Reply
    • motheringspirit says

      1 October 2015 at 9:40 am

      I had never heard of this, Louise! Thank you so much for sharing. A lovely reminder of how very important and sacred a renewal of baptismal vows can be!

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. prayers for anxiety in pregnancy « mothering spirit says:
    15 June 2011 at 12:45 pm

    […] Prayers for a baptism anniversary. The post I wrote for S’s 1st anniversary gets hits from search engines nearly every day. I find this to be a hopeful sign, that people really want to celebrate the third moment of sacraments, to keep remembering and living out their their importance. I’m now even more determined to track down good baptism anniversary prayers each year for my kids’ celebrations so that I have more to share. […]

    Reply
  2. every parent’s prayer « mothering spirit says:
    29 September 2011 at 8:35 am

    […] And considering this blog gets hits every single day from people searching for baptism anniversary prayers, it certainly should have received at least as much attention as last year. […]

    Reply
  3. book, bath, table & time: teaching at home « mothering spirit says:
    25 March 2012 at 2:33 pm

    […] meals, scrubbing garden dirt from fingernails, wiping paint from faces – remind me that baptism is an everyday sacrament: cleansing, refreshing, blessing. I hope I can immerse my children in a […]

    Reply
  4. the taste of memory « mothering spirit says:
    7 November 2012 at 10:56 am

    […] celebrated both boys’ baptism anniversaries a few weeks back. (Now you know why I’ve had baptism on the brain so much lately.) Their days […]

    Reply
  5. What We Talk About When We Talk About Sacraments | CatholicMom.com says:
    24 October 2014 at 4:59 pm

    […] a special dinner and dessert, lighting their baptismal candle at the dinner table. (Click here for a baptism anniversary prayer!) Tell your child why you wanted to have them baptized and what you hoped it would bring to their […]

    Reply
  6. The Scrawl Vol. 1, No. 17 | The Middle Button says:
    8 March 2016 at 10:24 pm

    […] enjoyed these notes on living into the sacraments. We recently got a holy water font that we put up near our door, and […]

    Reply
  7. the bravest baptism - Mothering Spirit says:
    14 March 2016 at 7:42 am

    […] remember the sight of Sam’s baptism. Holding our baby – our own baby! after years of hoping! – dressed in the same white […]

    Reply

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I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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If our daughters had lived, we never would have pl If our daughters had lived, we never would have planted this garden. 

There are pockets of beauty in my life today that could not have existed if they had survived.

Acknowledging this does not mean I accept their loss. Or that I wouldn’t trade it all to have them here instead.

But the grieving know this strange, stubborn, saving truth: that goodness can grow in the gaping holes left by the ones we love.

I don’t know any simple ways to make sense of the hard times in which we’re living. As a porous soul, I feel it all and it breaks my heart, even as I cling to what I know is true.

But loving and losing my girls has taught me that life is both heart-breaking and resilient, that surviving is more complicated than we suspect, that most people are walking around shattered beneath the surface.

Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of it, searing as sunlight: the grief in someone’s eyes behind their anger, the burden sagging their shoulders, the past that’s poisoning their present. Few things have transformed my life more than learning to recognize pain in others.

Grief is a long letting go of a life you thought you’d have. Most of us are carrying more of it than we realize—or remember when we’re dealing with each other (especially when we’re tearing each other down).

Go gentle today. Practicing compassion and generosity of spirit will crack open more of the world and its confounding struggles. You might lose the satisfying clarity you clung to before life broke your heart in complicated ways, but you will find more of God in the messy, maddening middle.

I have learned this much from the garden I never planned to plant, from a version of life I never dreamed.
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
Since June is a month for graduations & celebrations, I’m delighted to help you celebrate with @grottonetwork .

Grotto Network shares stories about life, work, faith, relationships, and more. Check out their videos, podcast, and articles to help you reflect on where you are in your journey.
 
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To enter the giveaway, follow @grottonetwork and @thismessygrace and leave a comment below about what you’re celebrating this month. Tag a friend for extra entries (up to 3).
 
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“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

Is it any coincidence that birth often brings both cries and screams, laughter and joy?

We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

I sit outside a coffee shop two blocks from my children’s school on a sunny afternoon, the last day of the year. I wipe away tears for the natural nostalgia, but I also feel the gutting grief welling up from my own wounds of motherhood to know a deeper truth: marking milestones with love and longing is nothing compared to the gaping loss of not having your child here to break your heart in a thousand tiny ways.

So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
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