NATURALLY BLESSED
Before the actual
blessing of the sick at a Mass for the Sick, the priest asked the sick people
assembled to bless him and the volunteers. They were a little anxious, thinking
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.
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.
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 naturally 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 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 blessed from the beginning. To be born is to be
chosen and blessed.
The
Holy Eucharist is a permanent blessing within the earth. It is 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 divine potential.
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, diving 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. Blessing for something
rather than upon something, as though holiness were not already there,
has echoes in the theology of Vatican II and its understanding of grace. 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. These are those whose hands, eyes and bodies
are always blessing everyone and everything around them. But not all are like
that. In our Church today there are many strong convictions. But some are
expressed with a reckless disregard for people’s feelings. They carry no
blessing.
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.
Fr. Daniel O’Leary
The Tablet
18 October 2008
pg 15
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