Born to Bless

Autumn in North Yorkshire.

We were gathered in the parish school for our Autumn ‘Mass of the Sick’.  The SVP stalwarts who lovingly prepare these popular Eucharists, had begun, with their children, the custom of blessing each needy parishioner as I moved around anointing them.  Before this particular celebration we had wondered about asking those same parishioners to bless us, as well.  We were a little anxious.  Some in our team thought it might be too big a challenge.

We need not have feared.  With an unaffected elegance the ill, the elderly, leant forward from their seats and wheelchairs, and graciously and smilingly placed their hands on our heads and shoulders, murmuring words of healing and comfort.  It was as though they were only waiting to be asked, as though this was something they had always wished to do.  Blessing came naturally to them.

Liturgical purists may have some problems with such home-made, heart-felt moments of grace and blessing.  But that afternoon there was an unforgettable atmosphere of divine presence, when we, the so-called able-bodied, knelt for the healing touch of those we were serving.  Both diminished and empowered by their pain, they were the anawim in whom God’s own essence burned most fiercely.  Here, in the shadow of their Cross, was the primary source of divine blessing.

Those trembling, gnarled human hands that were reaching out to touch us were alive with grace.  They were small sacraments of the compassion of the incarnate God.  They were beautiful in their long history of caring and comforting, of failing and falling, of nourishing and nurturing.  They had proved their worthiness.  That is why they were fashioned for blessing, too, for calling out the image of God from every broken heart, for resurrecting divine courage where only weakness now lived.  There is a real danger in clericalising such freely-given divine power.

The mutual blessing that flowed around the school hall that darkening Sunday afternoon revealed to all of us the promise and the power that we already carry within us.  That is our essential nature. This recalling of who we truly are, of the invincible holiness of our very nature, is a huge dimension of sacramental blessing and celebration.

Surely it is a lovely aspect of baptism, for instance, to see it as a thanksgiving blessing for the birth of the baby, already blazing with God’s glory, but also vulnerable to losing it in the encounter with the waiting ‘sin of the world’?  Instead of seeing the baby’s life as only really beginning at the font, how delightful it is to see the sacrament as the recognition of the divine image already fresh and shining in that baby from birth, and now so warmly embraced into the family of Jesus.

Towards the end of the celebration I usually invite the oldest grandparent to bless the baby.  The spontaneous and natural way they do this, protecting God’s dream in the little one, blessing her with their wisdom for the thresholds and transitions awaiting her, always takes my breath away.

And all through her life, when that baby continues to be blessed by her parents with the sign of the cross every morning and night, blessed by her friends and her own senses, blessed by the prayers and sacraments of the Church, she will be reminded again and again, particularly during the winters of her life, of the Original Blessing that her life is from the very beginning.   To be born is to be chosen and blessed.

Anticipating similar sentiments in John Paul 11’s Eucharistic writings, Fr Antonio Rosmini, philosopher and founder of the Institute of Charity, had a profound sense of the Mass as a permanent blessing within the earth.  He sees that blessing as the releasing of all the seeds for good and for love implanted by God at the core of everything.  Eucharistic celebration blesses and stirs that implanted impulse so that these seeds are confirmed and nourished to blossom to their full and divine potential.  ‘All things in this world, animate and inanimate,’ he wrote, ‘are (revealed as) sanctified by the Body and Blood consecrated by the priest’.

Let me put all of this in another way.  As priests what are we doing when we bless?  Are we actually making something holy, adding on something that was missing, spiritually disinfecting a merely natural object?  Or are we revealing a hidden richness, divining a wellspring of sacred presence, already secure below the surface of everything?  Is this not the true meaning of Incarnation?

Is consecrated ground more sacred than the kitchen floor burnished and blessed by the feet of the families who played and prayed on it?   We take off our shoes because all ground is holy ground.  We bless the land to reveal that every bush is a burning bush.  Is the still water in the church font holier than the dancing water in the stream nearby?  We bless water to invoke, enhance and reveal its ageless, unique and beautiful healing power.

In his ‘Blessing – A Theology of Creation?’ Canon Alan Griffiths writes ‘The tradition of blessing for something rather than upon something, as though (holiness) were not already there, has echoes in the theology that underpinned Vatican II and its understanding of grace.  Karl Rahner, for instance, held that the sacramental event brings grace to expression without denying its pre-existence.  Grace is always there: the sacraments do not supply it but express it.  They reveal its presence . . .’

Everyone can bless.  It comes with our already-graced humanity.  There are people who can be called sacraments of blessing.  There are those whose hands and eyes and bodies are always blessing everyone and everything around them.  Their senses are taut with blessing-energy.  All their words are blessing-words.  They call our names and we know we are blessed.  Their every touch is a blessing-touch.  Their every handshake is vibrant with blessing.  Every kiss a kiss of peace.

Sometimes, like Jesus, they do not even know that they are releasing a healing blessing, trailing light as they move amongst others.  They do not realise the locked doors they are opening, the desperate spirits they are quickening, the hope they restore.  These walking sacraments are truly beautiful people.  The love they have become reflects to us the hidden beauty in our lives too.  They bless us with the gift of ourselves.

But not all are like that. Take the example of the graceless tone of current exchanges in Catholic newspapers and internet blogs. In our confused Church today there are many strong convictions.  But some are expressed with a reckless disregard for people’s feelings.  They carry no blessing.  According to a recent report from the Evangelical Alliance, Church leaders find Christian blogs the most hurtful of all. In a Hasidic saying we read, ‘Rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way, it will still be muck. Wouldn’t you be better off spreading blessings on your way to heaven?’

Friends (and enemies) probably have no idea of the eternal effect they have on each other.  There is a memory in every blessing that remains hidden in the warp and weft of our souls.  Fresh within me still is the Celtic blessing my mother left on my pillow the night before I left home for the first time:

Be thine the encompassing of the God of life;

Be thine the encompassing of the Christ of love;

Be thine the encompassing of the Spirit of grace;

To befriend thee and to aid thee,

O Donal, beloved of my breast:

To befriend thee and to aid thee,

Thou beloved of my heart.