Blessings

Earlier today I was talking about a program that provides middle school students with food to take home at the end of the day. The program is called Backpack Blessings. With this being at a public school, I paused and wondered if this were not inappropriate and a subtle form of proselytization upon unaware younglings. I was of course quickly reminded that the students needed food and were getting food so I shouldn't spend too much time being bothered by the name seeing as it would seem they picked the name based on the alliteration... A writing tool I find at times captivating and in other instances tremendously lazy. 

(If anyone wonders why I'm such a strong supporter of keeping things such as prayer out of public schools I'll let you read what my friend Toby had to say about this, Click Here).

As I continued to think however I began to wonder if I didn't also have an issue with the use of the term blessing in this instance altogether. Should the charity of others be considered a blessing? With this question on my mind, I went to my office on a Friday night to begin looking for a definition of the term blessing. 

It was then that I was easily able to find and understand a bit more why I may have had pause in this casual, alliterative, lazy use of the term blessing. First I checked the YOUCAT and found the following, "a blessing is something that comes from God (Latin benedicere; Greek eu-logein = to call good); to bless is a divine, life-giving, and life-preserving action." 

While I found this to be a good starting point, I was not satisfied. So naturally, I turned to the actual Catechism of the Catholic Church for what I hoped to be a more detailed definition. "A blessing or benediction is a prayer invoking God’s power and care upon some person, place, or undertaking. The prayer of benediction acknowledges God as the source of all blessing. Some blessings confer a permanent status: consecration of persons to God, or setting things apart for liturgical usage." 

Here again, I found this to be more detailed and certainly more in-depth, but I did not find satisfaction. 

What I did come to realize is how limited my view on blessings had become. In part, because I grew up with these definitions defining not only what I believed, but what most of those around me knew. A blessing is from God and we are lucky and should thank God if we find ourselves in his good graces. 

Yet what if we took the term blessing and removed the religious implications? Yes, I understand that in doing this I want to completely change the meaning of the word from its origins to mean something else and perhaps I should simply look to use a different word, but instead I've decided to try and craft my own definition of the term. 

I would like to propose that we give the term freedom to mean any type of favor, kindness, charity, and/or love that is shown. In this way, I hope that we can recognize one another as blessings ourselves to one another, as well as recognizing our actions of love and kindness toward one another as kindness. Now perhaps what I'm suggesting is simply a realization or recognition of the divine, the imago Dei, or image of God within all of us that was imprinted upon us and within us by the creator... Which of course I think is true, but perhaps for now on this Friday evening I can keep things a bit more simplified and just leave you all with a blessing of brevity. 

I am curious how you might define blessing.

Peace and Blessings Always

~M

A favorite image of mine just for fun