Anam Cara

In the Christian tradition, water is always blessed before use; this is understood to infuse the water with the energy of the Holy Spirit, the carrier of the Trinity. Holy water is used in the sacraments to bless and confer transformation. Before the coffin is lowered, the grave is blessed. Holy water is often sprinkled at night for the souls in purgatory, and also for exiles and to protect those traveling. It is also often carried in cars to protect from accident and danger. Furthermore, it is held to be powerful in protecting us from evil; no such spirit would enter a circle of holy water.

Traditionally in Ireland, the act of blessing was not separate from daily life. When baking bread, a woman would put the sign of the cross on the dough with a knife. Each year on St. Bridget’s Eve, my uncle always made a little timber cross and nailed it to the ceiling to protect our home for the next year. On this night it is also customary to leave a piece of cloth out overnight, then take it in the next morning dripping with dew. This was the Brath Bride; it brings luck and blessing for the year. On May morning—Beltane—people often wash their faces in the morning dew for healing and health. On St. John’s night, some of the fire is put out along the fields of the farm to protect it. On February 3, the feast day of Saint Blaise, people have their throats blessed. February 2 is the feast of Candlemas. On this day wax candles are brought to the church to be blessed. It is very important to have these blessed candles in the house. Anytime during the year when there is trouble the blessed candle is lit. Furthermore, inanimate objects when blessed can become vehicles of grace and protection; this includes medals, scapulars, rosaries, and crucifixes.

In all these modes of blessing the objects are seen to take on the infusion of sacred power, and long after the occasion of blessing has passed the blessed object still retains its protective power. There is certain poignancy in this belief that blessing can enter the silence and privacy of the object and continue to dwell there. It changes the nature of the object; it is no longer simply itself. Now it is a live sanctuary from which the divine light and protection proceed. Be it water, metal, fire, or candle: each can be penetrated and benevolently permeated by the breath of blessing. These practices also recognize how precarious the work of day-to-day living can be: there can be danger or darkness anywhere. Habitual time can turn in a second, and suddenly some unforeseen suffering is taking up tenancy in one’s life. These blessing objects are meant to become active at these frontier apertures where one could be damaged.

A BLESSING IS A PROTECTIVE CIRCLE OF LIGHT

What is a blessing? A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen. Life is a constant flow of emergence. The beauty of blessing is its belief that it can affect what unfolds.

To be in the world is to be distant from the homeland of wholeness. We are confined by limitation and difficulty. When we bless, we are enabled somehow to go beyond our present frontiers and reach into the source. A blessing awakens future wholeness. We use the word foreshadow for the imperfect representation of something that is yet to come. We could say that a blessing “forebrightens” the way. When a blessing is invoked, a window opens in eternal time.

The word blessing comes from the Old English: Blêtsian, blêdsian, blœˆdsian. As intimated in the sound of blêdsian it means “to sanctify or consecrate with blood.” It is interesting that though the word blessing sounds abstract, a thing of the word and the air, in its original meaning it was vitally connected to the life force. In ancient traditions blood was life; it connected the earthly, the human, and the divine. To bless also means to invoke divine favor upon.

We never see the script of our lives; nor do we know what is coming toward us, or why our life takes on this particular shape or sequence. A blessing is different from a greeting, a hug, a salute, or an affirmation; it opens a different door in human encounter. One enters into the forecourt of the soul, the source of intimacy and the compass of destiny.

Our longing for the eternal kindles our imagination to bless. Regardless of how we configure the eternal, the human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness, a place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now.

BLESSING IS FOR THE PILGRIM MIND