blessing (1)
In the Gospel According to Matthew 14:19 (NABRE), Jesus blesses the bread and as a result it multiplies. This is a powerful act and one that triggers a miraculous intervention by God. Blessing remains a deeply important part of our religious practice today and one that we continue to hope will invoke God’s miraculous intervention. Still, in today’s practice, the concept of what a blessing is and does has potentially become a bit obscured. Take a moment to consider what you think is meant by blessing. What is a blessing? What does it do? How does one administer it?
In both Greek and Latin, the word for blessing is a compound consisting of two parts. The first part is a prefix meaning “good” or “well.” The second part is a word for speech. In the Greek, then, we have εὐ (eu) plus λογέω (logeo). Logeo means “I speak,” and the prefix eu modifies that meaning to be “I speak well of” or “I praise.” The same holds for the Latin benedicere. Blessing, then, fundamentally is an act of speech, specifically of good speech, and blessings seem to fall into the category of performative speech, speech that makes what it says a reality. Other common examples in human society include things like the words of a marriage that affect that union.
At their heart, blessings are spoken words that have the ability to alter reality in some way as Jesus’ blessing does in the Gospel According to Matthew. We notice today that such acts exist almost exclusively in a liturgical context, and this is not an accident. As non-divine, human people, our words ordinarily do not change reality, but when we speak as Christ and Christ speaks through us, those words gain a tremendous amount of power and authority and are then able to affect change. God has given us a framework within which we can speak with his voice in our liturgy, and so liturgical blessings in any capacity are extraordinarily powerful.
related topics: beatitude; blessed; blessing (2); favor with God
you also may like our two-part study of the psalms
Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church provides an in-depth look at all 150 psalms based on The Abbey Psalms and Canticles, a translation prepared by the Benedictine monks of Conception Abbey and endorsed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). This translation is being included in new Liturgy of the Hours books. Volume I currently is available only in a digital format. Click on these links to view a sample first lesson from Volume I and another from Volume II.
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