Water: Thursday

In the 1959 Canadian Prayer Book, the Catechism starts, “What is your name? Who gave you this name?” And the answer is, “My godparents, when I was baptized, wherein I was made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” And, that is a Christian’s identity. If that’s the only thing somebody remembers, they’ve got their Christian life.

– Br. James Koester, SSJE


Way of Love: Daily Practice

Who do you know who is weathering a storm? How can you be a life-raft for them today?


Share your experience in the comments below

3 Comments

  1. Maylanne Maybee on March 12, 2020 at 6:54 am

    A small correction to the Canadian 1959 BCP Catechism: At baptism “I was made a member of Christ, THE child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” Why “the child of God”? My mother always told me because I was uniquely loved by God as if I were God’s only child. A lovely detail that has always stayed with me.

  2. Felicity Pickup on March 12, 2020 at 10:40 am

    Yes, Br James, that was the only thing I remembered of it!

    • Revd Heather Benson on March 12, 2020 at 5:22 pm

      That beginning to the Catechism has been in every incarnation of the Book of Common Prayer since 1549 until the 1979 American book which retained an echo of it but nowhere near the beginning. It seems a great shame to me that something so simple, direct, complete in its brevity , memorable and true should have been changed and lost in an age which needs that clear understanding of our Christian identity so much.

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