Sunday saw me getting dressed up in my suit for a shocking third time in three days: once for Matt and Clarice’s wedding, once for the CVCA auction, and then for our friends Matt and Lis. Matt and Lis’s son, Matt, was being baptized into the Catholic church, and they had invited us to be in the congregation. We are fond of Matt and Lis, and so we said yes, and I figured a suit was safe for a formal event. I’m glad I did; Matt and Lis had the service done in Latin, which added some formality to the already august occasion.

Matt and Lis now attend St. Sebastian’s church in Akron, which is a beautiful church. It is huge, and the altar area is a gigantic mural that is very beautiful. The church is decorated in a modern style, but with an eye to tradition, and so it is very tasteful and respectful.

There were probably about twenty-five people at the baptism, and the ceremony was beautiful. I could not understand the specific words because they were in Latin, but I was still glad to be there. At one point, the priest changed his robes; I assume that symbolized putting off the old spirit of this world and putting on the new spirit in Jesus Christ. That may be a wrong interpretation, but I liked it nonetheless.

Mer and I hung out in the church for a short time afterwards while Matt and Lis and the family were getting pictures taken. The church had the traditional Catholic church “Stations of the Cross” where pictures show thirteen different stages of Jesus’s progression to be crucified. These pictures were also murals, like the large mural up front, and they were very pretty. We got to chat with Matt for awhile, and then we headed to the car to  head over to Matt and Lis’s house for a small party that celebrated Matthew’s baptism and, slightly belatedly, the birthday of Matt and Lis’s daughter.

The party was in Mat and Lis’s ample family room, and there were again about twenty-five people there. I got a chance to chat with Matt more while I kept him company upstairs while he was waiting for the pizza to show up. Matt is very deep and knowledgeable, and I always enjoy talking with him. Once the food arrived, we headed back to the family room, and we ate and mingled. Mer and I got to meet Matt’s dad, who we had heard about but never actually met. He is a very nice man, and we got to hear a handful of stories from Matt’s growing-up years, including the fun-fact that Matt was a seventh grader at CVCA when Mer was a senior there. That required us to look up his photo in Mer’s yearbook when we got home, and there he was. Much fun.

We finished the party off by trying each of two different cakes, and Matt and I talked about doing another Matt-Lis-Matt-Meredith poetry study this summer. I’m leaning toward Donne, but it sounds as if Lis is a big George Herbert fan. Either way, time spent with Matt and Lis is time well spent.