Round and round I turned the rack in the gift shop at the church I was visiting, first checking one jewelry box and then another and another and another.
I was in New Orleans for six days during the end of May into early June, just after my youngest godson, Nicholas, was confirmed. I love Nicholas, I love New Orleans, and the timing was right. I decided I wanted his confirmation gift to come from St. Louis Cathedral, one of the places I have visited multiple times during the two vacations I have been to the French Quarter.
The little gift shop there is packed with beautiful, faith-related items, and the case with the crucifixes was no exception. I narrowed my choices down to about six and then four and then two. My favorite was a gold-covered sterling cross with a sterling corpus, but the one I chose was a sterling cross with a sterling corpus covered in gold.
My heart overruled my eyes when I bought Nicholas’s gift. The first crucifix was more to my taste, but the second one had its priorities right. What it said to me was this: While the cross is important, it is secondary to he who bore it. It seemed fitting that I buy Nicholas a cross of sterling, a lovely metal but not as precious as gold, with a golden image of Christ, surely the most precious gift any of us has been given.
Nicholas, though very smart, won’t quite grasp this yet, at least not on his own, but I will share the reasoning with him anyway. It comes down to this: Christ should be second to nothing in our lives.
I hope my dear godchild, the fifth of five godsons with whom I have been blessed and likely the last I will have, will remember that throughout his life. That knowledge will bring joy to his present and his future. That belief will serve him well in this life and the next. I hope the crucifix I gave him to mark this important sacrament is more than a piece of jewelry to him; I hope it is a visible reminder of the most important lesson he can ever learn.
Patricia Quigley of Mantua is a freelance writer.
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