Recently I went to visit someone in the hospital. After decades of ministry, this was certainly nothing new for me. As I walked down the hall, I found myself, by chance, behind a nurse with beautiful braided gray hair that tumbled down her back like a waterfall. I told her it was beautiful. She was startled, and smiled, and ever so slightly straightened her shoulders. I was intentional. I meant to give her a blessing.
I grew up in a secular home, where praise was relatively rare and the conveyed concept of duty was strong. One did well because it was one’s duty to do well. Words of praise were rare. Reading C.S. Lewis, I became a Christian as a child, but still lived by the rules of my duty-bound family.
When I experienced a call to the priesthood, I knew that priests blessed, but I had no idea what that meant. I learned little more in seminary. Of course, I learned the ABCs of ordained priests: that they can absolve, bless, and consecrate. Yet I do not recall a single explanation of what a priest actually does by “blessing,” much less what, with the same word “bless,” lay people do beyond expressing gratitude at dinner. I do note that in the American South “Bless his heart” conveys a number of things.
In short, I believed what the Church believed, but understood nothing of what I was doing when I, newly ordained, was first asked to “bless the people.” What could I as a mortal, priest though I was, add to God’s blessing of the creation? I suspected that the answer was nothing.
It was not until some years later that I began to understand that the act of blessing changes things, rather like the actions of Adam of naming creatures. God had created the animals and blessed them, but, in a subordinate action of co-creation, Adam names the creatures, identifying them.
God made the world good, but then God invited humankind to name what was already made and blessed. When priests and bishops bless, we reaffirm and name the goodness or beauty or grace of someone or something in creation. It is a benediction, from the Latin: we speak out the good. However, non-ordained Christians, as part of the priestly people of God, do the same thing when they ask God’s blessing on the gift of a meal or give their blessing to their children, or thank someone else who has done them a kindness with “Bless you.”
Intentionally practicing blessing as a spiritual habit changes one’s perception of the world. I have learned that if I compliment someone on a job well done, or admire the style of their hair, I bring a blessing to the action, or to a person, or name the quiet courtesy I saw offered to another. I find myself more grateful to God that goodness and beauty and grace are still abroad to be seen and named. I see the Holy Spirit breathing on all sorts of human activity. I become more aware that I am part of the body of Christ, and as such, I am charged to see, name, and bless goodness or grace or courage when I meet it, as Elizabeth did, when she blessed Mary (Luke 1:42), or as Jesus did when he blessed Peter for discerning the truth (Matt. 16:17).
As the body of Christ, Christians are called to be the priestly people, to name and bless all the goodness, truth, courage, kindness, and beauty that they see in the world. Our naming and blessing changes things. Think of a time when someone named something you did or were. It made you more … yourself, a little happier, or surprised, or glad to be noticed. Priest or people, when we bless or praise, we name and affirm the beauty or kindness or justice or truth to a world and people hungry for all those things.
An Episcopal priest of the Diocese of Dallas and for many years of the Diocese of Virginia. I care about healthy congregational life and am unabashedly for new churches.