Most priests baptize with a silver baptismal shell, a few delicate tablespoons per scoop. At La Iglesia de San Clemente in Huntington Park, the energetic longtime vicar, the Rev. Santos Flores, baptizes with a pitcher, the kind they used for bug juice at summer camp. We did it 13 times when I visited on Sunday. He passed me the pitcher when a candidate or family preferred English.
En cualquier idioma, everyone got doused. Nosotros teniamos agua por todas partes, soaking the candidates, prayer books, and floor. Looking at the scene, an observer would have had to conclude that something tremendous had happened. We then had 35 confirmations and receptions and three dozen first communions. Some candidates, los personas de tres milagros, experienced the whole sacramental trinity on the same day.
Besides presiding, I was along to offer a bilingual sermon. Fr. Santos had told me about anxiety in the neighborhood about the federal government’s cruelty to immigrant workers who are well established in our communities, doing jobs we have offered them and paying their taxes. But nothing could diminish the traditional spirit of welcome at St. Clement’s — the banners, the gourmet feast at lunch, the band music, the smiles all around. “As for our politicians in Washington, who have forgotten that human dignity and a spirit of welcome are American values,” I said, “let them come to St. Clement’s Church, and be welcomed, and begin to learn again what it really means to be American.”
On this my third, and perhaps final, episcopal visit to this hearty mission church, the bishop’s warden, Eleuterio Hernandez, assisted me graciously, along with Santos’s spouse, Angelina. Their tech-savvy daughter Damaris Medina took group photos. We had perhaps 150 in church, and by the end of my five-hour visit, I believe I spoke with everyone, each person evincing kindness and welcome, sometimes asking for a blessing or offering a hug.
Our gospel reading, Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, taught that a warm welcome awaits everyone who turns to God and should await everyone who returns home, no matter what. The magic of church done right is making someone feel at home who’s never been there before. Among the revelations of my Sunday visits is that the church’s greatest gifts are these oases of welcome and love all around us. Nothing in our isolating society is quite like the fellowship of faith. It is the cure for so much that ails us. Yes, something tremendous happened Sunday at St Clement’s — as it does whenever the people of God are together in faith.
