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For those of you out there who are parents, as I now am, I thought that this was something good to pass along:
THE PARENTAL BLESSING: In an address before the sixteenth annual convention of the National Catholic Conference on Family Life in 1949, the Rt. Rev. Archabbot Ignatius Esser, O.S.B., recalled an incident that was very striking. He said that several years previously there was a headline in our Catholic papers which read, “Bishop Kneels for Mother’s Blessing.” He continued, “It was the Most Reverend F. T. Roch, D.D., Bishop of Tuticurin, India. He met his mother at the railroad station and there, in the presence of a multitude of people, he `knelt before his mother to receive her blessing, and the grand old lady placed her wrinkled hands on the head of her illustrious son and blessed him’.”
Many of our fathers and mothers do not know that they have this privilege. In our times, especially in this country, the custom has fallen into disuse. This is one custom which by all means should be fostered. There should be no difficulty in reintroducing it. Young parents will find that, if the practice is started early in their family life, there will be no trouble in keeping it up. And the parents of older families will surely not refuse to bless their children, even if grown-up, if they ask the blessing of them.
How it is done: Archabbot Esser suggests that the parents place their hands on the head of the kneeling child and say: “I bless you, my child, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Then they make the Sign of the Cross upon the forehead with the thumb of the right hand. If all of the children are blessed at the same time, the parent simply traces a cross over them while the words are pronounced. He says that other appropriate words may be used. They may be varied to suit any occasion. A letter to an absent son or daughter might include a “God bless you, my child.” Also, the parents, when they are at the point of death, should give their last blessing to their children. (Rev. Bernward Stokes, O.F.M, How to Make Your House a Home)
Incidentally, for those of you who have some interest in the breviary, etc., when I did a quick google search to see who this Archabbot Esser was, I turned up this page. Nothing particularly special there, but it gives you a little information about what this monk did to make the breviary more accessible for lay people and non-readers of Latin. Kinda nice and also kinda liberal in its way. Anyone “deeply involved in the American liturgical movement” is at least a little suspicious to me - but that’s neither here nor there as far as this blessing business is concerned.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
My grandmother often recalls that, during her childhood, she and her siblings never retired for the evening without kneeling before their parents and asking their blessing. I always thought it was a beautiful custom.
My husband and I bless all five of our children in this manner every night before bed. I can’t remember where we even got the idea from it has become so natural. I am sure we must have read about it somewhere. After the evening rutine of prayers, books, washing up my husband will say “Ok now hugs, kisses, blessings.” I have even caught my little girls give their dolls a blessings while playing house. So darling.
Thank you Iosephus. What a beautiful way for parents to send their children to bed. I might also suggest that husbands and wives do the same before going to sleep. Others might bless one another on parting: grandparents/grandchildren, even close friends. It can also be done with holy water.
Father, I wouldn’t have thought that this would be a very salutary thing to do, that is, one person blessing some other person with no familial relationship in place. I understand, I think, why a father can bless his children - but friends blessing friends strikes me as not right.
Perhaps it seems to be not right because it is a very intimate thing to do. In thinking about this I think you are correct. There should be a familial relationship with the exception of godparents. I was thinking of priests asking one another’s blessing but that is asking the blessing of a priest because he is a priest as anyone would. I’m also thinking the one who blesses should be the parent/grandparent/godparent. In the case of husband and wife, the husband should first bless the wife, then the wife the husband. But should the wife bless the husband? Not being married I don’t know if that fits the relationship. Would it be analagous to the subject blessing the superior in a religious community (which is never done)? A child would not bless his/her parent unless the child were a priest acting as a priest.
When I was a sophomore in college, I studied abroad in Jerusalem, and there was this odd situation where my scheduled departure from the US happened to fall right in the middle of a tour of the northeast that my choir was taking. As it happened, the tour went very near NYC at right about the time I was supposed to get myself there, so I decided to go on the tour and just jump ship a few days early to meet up with my study abroad group. (This was all arranged in advance, of course; I didn’t just suddenly disappear.)
The only kink in the plan was that the timing didn’t work out quite right. I needed to leave the tour while we were close to NYC, but they were heading off in the wrong direction a day too soon. I tentatively planned just to find a local hotel, but the family I stayed with (local families of Notre Dame alums would typically offer the choristers hospitality when we came through town) was very generous, and immediately invited me to stay the extra day with them. Hence the odd circumstance that I ended up spending nearly two days in the home of a Catholic family in Harrisburg, PA, whom I had just met, and with whom I had no other connection beyond sharing the same alma mater. It was a little funny, but actually we got along great. They seemed a very serious Catholic family, and I think were rather bemused by this young Mormon who nonetheless seemed in love with Catholic theology. They had four young boys, and I helped with their homeschooling for the day (I remember at the mother’s request, I got out my books and gave them a kind of mini-lesson on choral music), and played with the boys all afternoon, and in the evening they invited over a few of their parish friends and we all enjoyed watching some highlight reels from the glory years of ND football. It was a happy visit for everyone, I think.
On the morning of the day I left, the mother took the boys to some kind of early appointment, so the father was going to take me to meet the transport service that would get me to the JFK airport. As we were gathering up my stuff, he gave me a lunch his wife had packed for me, and then he paused for a moment in uncertainty as if he were thinking about something… and then took out a little bottle of holy water, pronounced a blessing over me, and signed the cross with the water on my forehead. There was a pause after that, and then he said, “Okay, let’s go,” and we said no more about it.
I’ll confess I was rather astonished when he did this, but I didn’t mind, and even felt oddly grateful. Of course he wasn’t any kind of relative, and I’ve never seen the family again (though I did send them a post card from Jerusalem!), but I think it was still a sort of quasi-paternal gesture, which seemed appropriate both in virtue of the fact that I was leaving on a long journey, and also probably in virtue of my general religious situation.
I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t think there should be hard and fast rules. If it feels right, go with it. It isn’t likely to do any harm, is it? I think with friends the idea of blessing seems strange, not because of lack of intimacy so much as because friends seem like peers or co-equals. I can imagine circumstances, though, when it might seem fitting, and in that case I don’t see any reason to be reticent.
Finally… my husband has blessed me on occasion. I’ve never blessed him — I think it would feel strange somehow — but I can imagine circumstances (for example, if he were very ill or in a coma) where I might want to, and it doesn’t seem to me like that would be improper.