Blessing

Dear Friends,

One of the wonderful traditions at St. Peter's School is that each child receives a birthday blessing near their birthday. In the times before COVID, we would all--our head of school, the other students celebrating birthdays, and me--lay hands on the child being blessed, and I would use my thumb to mark the sign of the cross on each child as they were blessed. Last year, we, like everyone else, emphasized the need to remain a bit more spread out, so we adapted our practice. Rather than laying hands on the recipient of the blessing, we extended our hands out toward them. And I, rather than marking them with the sign of the cross using my thumb, would make the sign of the cross over them with my hand--just like I do at the end of a Sunday Eucharist.

A couple of weeks ago, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. As we were saying the words of the blessing, "May the Lord walk behind you and before you, may his strength be a light to you this year, and may he bless you," right as I would make a sign of the cross, one of the students--a first grade girl with big glasses and a bigger smile--was copying my action. When I would make the sign of the cross she would do the same. It was cute. And then I thought about it and realized it was much more than cute.

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Today marks an important feast of the church--The Presentation of Our Lord. It is a day when we remember Jesus was taken to the temple by Mary and Joseph. There, the Holy Family found waiting Anna and Simeon. They were old, faithful members of the people of God. They were longing and waiting for the revelation of God's messiah. And they are rewarded for their faithfulness by witnessing the Christ, by having the chance to lift him up, to bless him, to prophecy over him.

What has struck me this year is the incredible faithfulness by which Jesus is surrounded. Mary and Joseph are faithful to take him to the Temple as their tradition dictated. Simeon and Anna are faithful to wait and look for the messiah in impossible times. And it isn't that God's plans would've been thwarted had Jesus not been surrounded by faithfulness. I have no doubt that he finds ways to work around the times we lack faith, thanks be to God. But, perhaps we can rest assured that Jesus's life and ministry is empowered all the more by the faithfulness that surrounds him. Perhaps he learns from the faithfulness of Mary and Joseph and Anna and Simeon something about his call, something about faithfulness, something about his ministry, something about what it is to live as a blessing for the whole world.

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Which brings me back to my first grade friend. It might be reading too much into her little sign of the cross, but it left me with a profound hope--that somehow little acts of faithfulness, little acts of blessing, add up. That those acts can be used to teach others what it is to be faithful and to bless. We are called to find the Annas and Simeons in our lives, those who will speak God's word to us and bless us. But my sense is, over time, we are also called to be Anna and Simeon in the lives of those around us. To make our signs of the cross over others, with hopes that they can learn from us what it looks like.

Grace and Peace,
Fr. Quinn+