Category The Parish Paper

That is the nobility of erotic love - to be caught up by another, to love with such abandon, to give oneself entirely to another in devotion. That is the sublimity shared between lovers.

On the feast of St. Mary Magdalene we read in Scripture an erotic love poem between a man and a woman - the Song of Songs. Mention of the erotic, of Eros, is likely to make us uncomfortable.

In continuity with the practice of the ancient Church, Anglicans practice infant baptism, “as most agreeable with the institution of Christ” (Article 27). “For the infants of Christians belong to God and to the Church no less than did formerly the offspring of the Hebrews to whom circumcision was administered in infancy.

Though the Scriptures are silent on the question of whether to baptize infants or not, other texts do shed definitive light on the question: those that speak about circumcision (the Old Testament sign that corresponds to Baptism), and the participation of the children of the covenant people in the blessings of the covenant.