Alternative Pastoral Prayers

Liturgies and Blessings for Health and Healing, Beginnings and Endings

Tess Ward

• Publisher: Canterbury Press Norwich
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781848254114
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christentum

This book is intended as a supplement to Common Worship Pastoral Services which provides liturgies for use in ministry to the sick – distribution of communion, emergency baptism, laying on of hands and anointing. Many hospital chaplains find their services are needed in other acute situations and often by people who have no church connection or knowledge of religious language. Here chaplains need to improvise. This practical volume draws on the experience of numerous clergy and chaplains and provides tried and tested liturgies in accessible language for a wider range of occasions. Prayers are included for - occasions surrounding birth: thanksgiving, baby blessing and naming, emergency baptism, prayers for a stillborn child- healing rites: communion, anointing, laying on of hands, confession and reconciliation - marriage in hospital, blessing of a civil union, affirmation of a relationship - prayers for every stage of a hospital stay – on receiving a diagnosis, before an operation, when life support is withdrawn- occasions surrounding the death of infants, children and adults

1. BABY CEREMONIES

1. Baby Blessing and Naming

2. Baby Blessing and Naming (Earth)

3. Baptism of Original Blessing

4. A Celtic Baptism

The gift of bringing a baby into the world is one of the most awe-inspiring moments of a life. It is often the first time we feel we have participated in a miracle. We become extremely aware of how precarious life is and of the mercy in which we are held. For many people, it is problem free and families down the ages have had ceremonies of thanksgiving, blessing, initiation and naming to welcome the new baby into the world, into a faith and into a family. For some, their worst fears are realized and they are launched into the terrible series of events that surrounds trying to save a baby either within the womb or once born. For others, their baby in the womb dies away from the hospital and often without warning. The first set of liturgies in this section are ceremonies of initiation; the second set are ceremonies for families who must face the ordeal of death in the midst of all the hopes for new life.

Ceremonies of Initiation

For many priests and ministers, infant baptisms are the most problematic of the occasional offices. We have been handed a difficult liturgy to use and there is the widest gap between what people want us to do and what we think we are doing. With weddings and funerals, we are at least singing from the same song sheet. In my experience as a parish priest, people wanted the water, they wanted some sense of thanksgiving and celebration that their baby had arrived safely into the world, they wanted a family party and they wanted a link with the Church. For some, that translated into churchgoing or belonging to the church toddler group, but for the majority it did not. The phrase that kept emerging when I asked people why they wanted their baby baptized was ‘it seems the right thing to do’. Folk religion gets a bad press but it serves a great purpose in helping people to celebrate life transitions in a secular culture. Unchurched people tell me at least once or twice a week that they value the presence of the Church. However, the baptism liturgy is a proper Christian initiation service and therefore does not serve the purposes of folk religion quite as well.

Meanwhile, creating personal naming ceremonies for children becomes more popular by the year. Some people would never darken the door of a church, and appropriately so as they do not subscribe to Christian faith, so it makes no sense to initiate their child into it. There are others who would like the Church to bless their child, though they might not want to sign up officially. It is this group of people that we could serve better with a more flexible and creative approach. So here are a series of services to cover different pastoral needs.

The ceremonies

We have a wonderful book called the Carmina Gadelica. It is a book of hymns and incantations from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland collected in the nineteenth century by Alexander Carmichael. It is true even now that anyone can baptize, but in these remote places where it could take a long time for a priest to arrive, a baby had two baptisms before then, one by the midwife or bathing woman as soon as the baby entered the world and was bathed. Then there was a second by a ‘knee-woman’, with the watching women saying ‘Amen’. This sense of being a knee-woman seems to combine the otherness of priest with the tenderness associated with babies and this feel affects the language and style in both these ceremonies, whether or not the celebrant holds the child on her or his lap or remains standing. The blessing with water and the final blessing are adapted from the Carmina Gadelica.

In a Hindu naming ceremony, the father whispers the child’s name to her or him on a leaf, so this has been included. It could of course be done without the leaf and more than just the father could whisper it. In non-religious services the naming is the climax of the ceremony, so more is made of the naming than we currently do in both thanksgivings and baptisms, but the high point of the services here is reserved for the blessing as befits a baby blessing from our tradition. In the first service, it still includes the giving of a Gospel. This may be appropriate in the second, too, depending on the family.

The ceremony could take place in a church, church hall, a home or outside, depending on the family’s preference. There are several options within the ceremony, for example planting a tree for the child, especially if it is done outside. Inside, a popular option is to have a book for the gathered community to write their blessings afterwards for the baby to keep. Each family could bring a flower and these could be gathered into vases and used to decorate the church or hall. Within the ceremony other options are included. The family may have ideas of their own.

1. Baby Blessing and Naming

The Baby Blessing and Naming is a service of thanksgiving, naming and blessing. It welcomes the baby into the world with thanksgiving and offers him or her to God’s blessing. Theologically it is much more creation-centred, less the grand salvific purpose and has no notion of joining the club, which is essential to a baptism service. Rather, the baby, by virtue of his or her presence, is already part of God’s creation, part of all that lives, and that is cause enough for thanksgiving. All the elements including water are part of the blessing. They are linked to the persons of the Trinity: Creator to Earth, Christ to Fire and Spirit to Air. However, water is given the honour of standing for all three as it is a universal symbol of life and part of many different kinds of initiation ceremonies including our own. It is meant to be a stand-alone ceremony and not part of a Sunday morning service. It requires a lot more work and individual tailoring than the current thanksgiving service, so it would be reasonable to charge for it.

2. Baby Blessing and Naming (Earth)

This ceremony uses less specific names for God and is designed for those who seek God’s blessing but have difficulty with organized religion. Offering them a ceremony may stay with them as a generous act of the Church long after their baby has been blessed and may be remembered in times of loss and difficulty. They may return rather than having their views of organized religion vindicated if the only thing we have to offer them is a rather formal and unimaginative service.

Baptism services

There is no doubt that as the Church today we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Many people want the Church to be there but do not particularly want to attend services. This is especially true of many families who come for baptism. Church as heritage is therefore still highly valued in our culture. The buildings, music, schools and perceived moral code will take much longer to die than Sunday morning attendance. So when families come to us for baptism, we have a pastoral dilemma. In the Church of England, the liturgy we currently use might work as church as heritage and may be perceived to do so by the generally unchurched families that we baptize because they are prepared to enter a different world for a morning. The baptism service honours some of the old texts, but where this works in the marriage service because the vows still describe the challenges presented by marriage, and it adds much to be saying the same vows that couples have said for centuries, it does not work so well pastorally for baptism. Many of us, long in the tooth with faith, struggle to understand the language of baptism, yet we stand there while we ask people who are not churchgoers to assent to beliefs in language that many of us could not subscribe to. This is particularly true of talking about the devil and using the word ‘submit’ which sounds vaguely abusive and does not seem a seller of a word to describe faith as it is experienced.

So the dilemma for liturgy in a much changed world is how far we stay with the history – church as heritage – or take the opportunity to try and communicate in the world we now live in, while respecting that people have been baptized since before Jesus and that its tradition is part of its joy. There are different views on this but here are two other baptism services.

3. Baptism of Original Blessing

In the Church of England baptism liturgy there is an emphasis on original sin running all the way through it. While many Christians believe in God’s grace and would accept that all people sin, it would seem a particularly strange emphasis to an unchurched person who would not perceive their baby to be sinful. So this is a Baptism of Original Blessing where human beings are seen as divine and capable of sinful and evil choices. God as Creator and the creation are not removed from Christ and his salvation but part of his humanity and ours also. The transformative work of the Spirit therefore takes up the whole of who we are in baptism. This seems particularly appropriate for infant baptism when a baby is not capable of choices at all. When we look at a baby or a sunset the evidence of God’s life is there before our eyes, which does not diminish our need of Christ’s mercy. The evidence of our own lives and the suffering in the world is confirmation of that. It just means it is all of a piece. It is written in the style of Common Worship and has retained liturgy that did not seem problematic so it can be used in a Sunday morning service seamlessly.

4. A Celtic Baptism

In the Celtic Baptism, the language and theology are very strong and undiluted. For anyone looking for church as heritage, here it is in another way and the older language and thought forms are relished. So the source is not the early Christian texts, but the Carmina Gadelica, the Lorica of St Patrick and other Celtic Christian prayers have been used or inspired the service. Ironically, this is quite contemporary because the Celts saw creation as part of salvation, not working against it. The theological emphasis is on the powers of good and evil being about in the world, including ourselves, rather than on personal sin. There is a strong emphasis on saving and salvation but the word sin does not occur. There is also no emphasis on Church or a dark world that needs the light of the Church, because God is everywhere. So the distinctions, which are strong in contemporary baptism services, are absent. The world and all of us in it are open to darkness and light and need God’s protection and blessing. The language is also appealing to contemporary spirituality because official liturgy can lose both the poetry and intimacy that seems extremely appropriate when welcoming a newborn.

1. Baby Blessing and Naming

Preparation

Help the family to prepare an altar as a focal point around which the blessing will take place. You will need:

• symbols of the four elements: a stone, candle, feather and bowl of warmed water. A spoon or scallop shell with the bowl if not using your hand. Include a small bottle for the family to take away some of the water.
• a Gospel.
• a leaf if the father wants to whisper the name on the leaf.

The family will need to bring:

• keepsakes, gifts, photos, flowers, candles, etc.
• a photo of a grandparent if they are deceased.
• a shawl.
• a small blessing tree if the family want this ritual. If they do, the family needs to have asked the guests on the invitation to bring a tiny gift or blessing. If a non-godparent or family member wants to share a blessing aloud it may be better to know ahead of time.

Ensure the family and godparents are prepared with their blessi...