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From Canon Ann Easter, Chief Executive of a Charity and Chaplain to the Queen:

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What lovely pictures of the royal christening this week! Her Majesty the Queen and prince Philip look so proud with their family around them and no fewer than three future Kings, please God. They say that Prince George Alexander Louis was very well behaved, looked gorgeous and no doubt was passed around between all his adoring guests, bless him - along with the cake and champagne!

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I wasn’t at the christening but I have preached in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace and it is an intimate and beautiful setting for such a delightful occasion. I have baptised people in other, rather different places though. I’ve baptised tiny, very premature babies, surrounded by tubes in incubators, lots of dear little wrigglers in various churches and, on one occasion, a gentleman in his eighties who suddenly decided that that was what he wanted. I have a feeling that, on Wednesday, when a godparent was asked to ‘Name this child’ they didn’t say ‘Yes please’ and also I suspect that, when the baby was passed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, nobody said ‘He’s just been sick’ as once happened to me!

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ÌýBut, wherever they happen, christenings – or baptism, the words mean the same -Ìý are occasions which bring together great joy and thanksgiving for a child’s life with an opportunity for family and friends to welcome the newest member, all wrapped up with our hopes and prayers for this child and all humanity.

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And because we know that we can’t keep a baby in bubble wrap for ever, as Christians, we want to set them up in the faith which will comfort and support them through whatever life throws at them; to hold out to them a pattern for their life which will connect them with all creation, on earth and in Heaven, and to teach them to rejoice in the knowledge that, to God, each and every one of us is unique, special and precious – just like royalty.