This Lazarus Saturday, we commemorated Christ's raising of Lazarus from the dead. By a beautiful conjunction, we also rejoiced in the baptism of our grandson Thomas. The baptism immediately preceded the Divine Liturgy, so the "newly chosen warrior of Christ" was able to partake of the Mysteries while still wet behind the ears.
It's no coincidence that Lazarus Saturday is marked liturgically as an especially suitable time for baptisms. At each Holy Baptism, we witness the raising of a life, perhaps not literally from death, but into a radically new level of Life.
These interwoven joys brought to mind (again) a favorite poem by G. K. Chesterton:
After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead
The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
- G. K. Chesterton, "The Convert"
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image: Christening, by Dmitri Petrov