Baptism

A very special Sunday morning

Silvia (Slovak), Karen (American), Ata (Iranian), Yours Truly (English) Jack (Irish) © Sybille Yates

To worship at St. Clement’s, Prague on any Sunday is always a great joy, with the possible exception of a few occasions in the depths of winter when coping with the cold can be a little difficult 🙁 But our worship yesterday morning was particularly special for two reasons.

Firstly, my good friend and ministerial colleague, Rev’d Dr Karen Moritz, was our preacher. As I have explained in two previous blog posts, ‘Welcome to another Karen‘ and ‘Pentecost in Prague‘, Karen is an ordained minister of word and sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and since September 2010 has been a Mission Co-worker with the Ceskobratrská církve evangelické / Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, (Lutheran – Presbyterian), working in the Ecumenical Department at their denominational headquarters. The CCE / ECCB, are the largest Protestant denomination in the Czech Republic and are also the owners of Kostel sv Kliment where we worship.

Karen is licensed under the Ecumenical Canons of the Church of England, to preach, help in the administration of Holy Communion and to lead non-Eucharistic worship. She is a much loved member of the St. Clement’s congregation and a great support to my ministry. As always, it was wonderful to be spiritually fed by her preaching, rather than to always be giving out myself. You can listen to her sermon from yesterday by following this link to our Church website.

The second reason that this morning’s worship was so special was because I conducted the baptism of an adult young man named Ata. Ata is an Iranian Christian who, because of his adoption of the Christian faith, has had to flee his home country and is currently seeking asylum here in the Czech Republic. He has been worshipping with us for several weeks, supported by two female friends, Darina (Czech) and Silvia (Slovak), both of whom also speak Farsi.

It has been a privilege to spend time with Ata, preparing him for baptism, aided by Silvia who has translated into Farsi when Ata has had any problems in understanding my English. One of the many things that has impressed me about Ata, is the way he brings his Farsi New Testament with him to Church, so he can follow the Epistle and Gospel readings and improve his English at the same time. Ata also has a most engaging smile as you can see in the photograph at the beginning of this post.

It was very moving to hear Ata publicly declare his Christian faith before the multi-national St. Clement’s congregation yesterday morning – by my calculation we had at least twelve different nationalities present. Following his baptism and Ata receiving his baptism candle representing the light of Christ, the congregation burst out into a spontaneous and long round of applause. He also received many warm greetings at the Peace.

Ata and Silvia added one final nice touch to a very special Sunday morning, by bringing various Iranian specialities which they shared with us at Coffee Hour following the service. May Ata continue to ‘shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father’.

A Wedding and a Baptism

The interior of St. Clement's Church, set up for the wedding © Ricky Yates — The interior of St. Clement’s Church, set up for the wedding © Ricky Yates

Last weekend, I had the privilege of officiating at two ‘occasional offices’, to use the term by which baptisms, weddings and funerals, are collectively known within the Anglican Church. On the afternoon of Saturday 7th September in Prague, I conducted my second wedding of 2013, whilst on the evening of Sunday 8th September, I conducted my first-ever baptism in Brno.

Unlike my earlier wedding this year, this second wedding took place in our worshipping home in Prague – Kostel sv Kliment/St. Clement’s Church. This has several major advantages from my point of view, not the least being that getting there was far less problematic than travelling to Bouzov Castle 🙂

As I have frequently written and said previously, the geography of a building, does impact on the way a wedding is conducted. As this wedding was the sixth wedding that I have conducted in St. Clement’s Church, I was thankfully far more at ease than normal. My only real concern as always, was being sure I had everything I needed either with me, or already in the Church, before setting out from the Chaplaincy Flat.

I got to Church more than an hour before the marriage service was due to begin, mainly to allow Larry the organist, plenty of time to practice all the music he was to play, well before the arrival of any of the guests. But it also allowed me to get the Church ready without any undue haste, and then to take the picture above.

Here is a close up of the table that I set up in the chancel apse where the necessary paperwork is completed. Rather than signing two marriage registers, as would be the case under the law of England and Wales, instead a four page marriage protokol has to be signed. But just like in England and Wales, the protokol has to be signed by the couple, as well as by two adult witnesses, and by me as the officiant. However, it being the Czech Republic, it also most importantly, needs to be stamped!

As you can see, I have pen, protokol and stamp in place, together with an Osvedcení, saying that the couple have fulfilled all the legal requirements allowing a religious marriage to take place, and an annotated protokol, to remind me as to who needs to sign where, to ensure I do not foul up anything!

Maria & David with me, following their wedding © Ricky Yates

The happy couple were David, an Englishman, and Maria, an American citizen from Puerto Rico. Both have lived in Prague for a number of years and for both, it was their second marriage. The supportive congregation was made up of family members, some of whom had specially flown in from the USA and the UK for the occasion, together with their friends, a mixture of expats and English-speaking Czechs. I could tell that there were a large number of expats present, by the laughter that followed my usual quip of saying, “This is the most important part of a Czech wedding ceremony”, followed by very firmly stamping the protokol 🙂

Sunday evening in Brno was a very special occasion, when I baptised Amelie Gabriela, the daughter and first child of Philip and Lenka Read, whose wedding I conducted in September 2010. This was the first-ever baptism for the Brno congregation since I started conducting regular monthly services there in January 2012. As I wrote in my earlier post in April, Phil and Lenka are having a house built just south of Brno, with a view of moving there permanently from England, later this year. Phil had two job interviews lined up for this week and I’m hoping to hear of a successful outcome, very soon.

Phil, Lenka & Amelie with me. the words in Czech on the wall behind us say 'God is love' © Ricky Yates — Phil, Lenka & Amelie with me. The words in Czech on the wall behind us say ‘God is love’ © Ricky Yates

Just like the wedding the previous day, my greatest fear was not having with me in Brno, everything I needed for the baptism service. When you are more than 200 km from home, it isn’t possible to pop back and pick up something you forgot! I also had the logistical problem of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church that we use for our Brno services, not having a font! I overcame this problem, by having a glass bowl on the altar, which can be seen on the right of this photograph.

Amelie's amazing baptism cake © Ricky Yates — Amelie’s amazing baptism cake © Ricky Yates

After worship in Brno, we always share fellowship over refreshments. Last Sunday, our refreshments included large helpings of this amazing cake, made especially to celebrate Amelie’s baptism. Supporters of the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS), will also notice that I was busy distributing copies of ICS News and Prayer Diary and the recent Prayer Diary supplement. The financial and prayerful support of ICS has been a major factor in the establishment of the Brno congregation.

A Baptism

RY, Allison, Martin & Jan — Allison, Jan & Martin with me outside St. Clement’s Church, following the baptism © Ricky Yates

One of the privileges of being a Christian Minister is being part of what sociologists call people’s ‘major life events’ when I conduct baptisms, weddings or funerals. And because of the somewhat unusual nature of the Prague Anglican congregation, I have conducted relatively few of each of these over the past almost four years I have been here. This in turn has meant that I have been able to give each of these ‘occasional offices’, (as they are collectively known), more attention to detail than might normally otherwise be possible.

All but two of the weddings that I have conducted since arriving in Prague have been cross-cultural – between an English-speaker and a Czech/Slovak/Belarusian. These have inevitably raised cultural and linguistic issues about which I have written previously in this blog. But they have also, without exception, been most enjoyable occasions as relatives and friends of each happy couple, despite their different nationalities and languages, have joined together to celebrate.

Two years ago tomorrow, I conducted the marriage of Jan, a Czech, to Allison, an American. Late last year, I was thrilled to hear that they had taken notice of the third reason that marriage is given according to the preface to the Anglican Marriage Service, ‘as the foundation of family life in which children may be born and nurtured in accordance with God’s will, to his praise and glory’ – Allison was pregnant!

Little Martin Morris Rovný duly arrived in the world early in March of this year. In this era of social media, he had already appeared on Facebook even before he was born with his mother posting pictures of ‘her scan’. Since then, numerous photographs of him have also been posted online by his proud parents.

Jan and Allison currently live in Sweden, where Jan is a research fellow at the University of Gothenburg and Allison has successfully completed and defended her own thesis, as well becoming a mother to her young son. As they were intending to spend a good part of August in Prague with Jan’s family, they asked whether it would be possible for Martin to be baptised at St. Clement’s as in their current rather peripatetic existence, they do see it as their spiritual home. Therefore on Sunday 26th August during our Sunday Eucharist, I baptised Martin Morris in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, using the font that stands just a couple of metres from where his parents had stood almost two years previously to make their marital vows to each other.

As our opening hymn, we sang ‘Come, thou fount of every blessing’ to the American folk tune Nettleton. This was the hymn that Allison’s family, together with the bride and bridegroom, had sung to the rest of the congregation at their wedding – a cappello in four-part harmony! It is a hymn virtually unknown this side of the Atlantic although it does now appear in ‘Common Praise‘, the successor to ‘Hymns Ancient & Modern‘, published in 2000. Not being in the hymnbook we use, I had to reproduce the words on our ‘Weekly Bulletin’ – fortunately they are out of copyright! In doing so, we also made Larry from Texas happy, who was playing the organ for us that Sunday, by for once singing a hymn he knew to what he deemed to be the ‘correct tune’ 🙂

Whilst we had a large number of Jan’s Czech relatives present for the service, the only members of Allison’s family able to be present were her parents, Morris and Mary Elizabeth who had flown over from the USA, especially for the occasion. However, I was very pleased that Morris accepted my invitation to lead our intercessions, immediately following the baptism of his grandson, just as he had led the intercessions at his daughter’s wedding some two years before. It did make once again, for a very special occasion.

You can now listen to the whole service on our Church website