By DONALD DeMARCO
The blessing, whether it is formal or informal, administered by clergy or laymen, performed in church or at home, is an everyday occurrence in Catholic life. It is a way in which God’s grace is invoked to benefit its intended recipient.
We bless our house, our food, our religious articles, people who are sick, a couple who marries, and anyone who is in need of comfort. The New Testament records Jesus blessing children, His apostles, the infirm, loaves for the 5,000, and the Bread at the Last Supper. The Mass concludes with a blessing. Blessings are used as a form of thank you — “bless you for your kindness.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church informs us that any baptized person can both confer and receive a blessing. Consumer receipts tell us to “have a nice day.” We should be more generous when it comes to our own dispensation of true blessings. The secular world shies away from God; but we can rush in where merchants fear to tread.
The poet, Petrarch, in Sonnet XLVII, blesses all the circumstance associated with meeting his love, Laura: “Blessed be the day, the month, the year, the season, the hour, the moment, the lovely scene, the spot when I was put in thrall by two lovely eyes which bind me fast. And blessed be the first sweet pang I suffered when love overwhelmed me, the bows and arrows which stung me, and the wounds which pierce to my heart.”
When one is in love, everything is blessed.
Our desire to bless stems from our desire to help others by invoking the name of the Lord. We are charitably disposed to others and want to be of help. The blessing also represents the faith that God will cooperate, and the hope that it will prove to be effective. Our spiritual life could do no more without blessings than our bodily life could do without food.
The desire to bless is universal. This means that even those who do not believe in the supernatural order share this desire. The secular world found a godless blessing in the hit movie, Star Wars: “May the force be with you.” For a while, it seemed to be on everyone ‘s lips.
So popular was this motion picture and its sequels that a National Star Wars Day was instituted. It is celebrated annually on May 4. If we pronounce this date aloud, we will hear a replication of “May the force be with you” (May the fourth be with you).
This secular blessing, despite its popularity, is merely a trendy expression, but not a real blessing. It has no force, no benefactor that supplies the would-be recipient with grace. It provides the well-wisher with a good feeling, but is barren of substance. Also, it creates a sense that we belong to a common culture that presumably has no need of religion.
God Bless America, the great patriotic song composed by Irving Berlin, seems to fall in the middle between the genuine blessing and its counterfeit. Several U.S. presidents concluded their speeches with this phrase. We wonder whether the motivation for using it was political rather than religious. Woody Guthrie objected to the words of the song and wrote This Land is My Land in protest. The KKK objected to God Bless America because it was penned by someone of the Jewish faith, Irving Berlin.
Secularists have a religious impulse, even though they do not carry it through and direct it to God. Humanists and other non-religious people often find themselves asked to come up with something that sounds like a blessing prior to a banquet, the beginning of a legislative session, or a retirement party.
Often, these counterfeit blessings borrow words from religious blessings. One secular blessing that is devoid of religious words is the following: “May the light that shines from deep inside, flow ever out and never hide.” The sentiment is fine, but that is all that it is, a sentiment.
The Catholic blessings, and they are prolix, are based on a universal impulse, but they also direct this impulse to its natural end, which is God. The counterfeit blessings may suggest comradery, but they do not unite people with the Lord who is the Author of all things that are good.
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