To Proclaim God’s Blessing

“As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts…You are to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to proclaim Christ’s blessing…” (The Examination: The Ordination of a Priest, 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church)

I have a few favorite dinner graces. Most of them can be found in the Commendations and Blessings section near the end of the Grey Book, a 1928 attempt by socially conscious clergy to revise the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. My favorite of all these is one familiar to any Franciscan, the Poverello’s blessing to Brother Leo:

MAY THE LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU.

MAY HE MAKE HIS FACE TO SHINE UPON YOU AND BE GRACIOUS TO YOU.

MAY THE LORD TURN HIS FACE TOWARDS YOU AND KEEP YOU IN HIS PEACE. 

I have seen these words ascribed to St. Francis in many Franciscan settings (mostly ministry websites preserved from the Web 1.0 era) throughout my year as FMS’ Programs Associate, but they are not actually of Franciscan origin. In Numbers 6, God gives these words to Aaron and the newly ordained priestly tribe of the Levites. “So shall [the priests] put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”  (Numbers 6:27) The Hebrew verb translated as put upon is also used throughout Numbers to describe driving a tentpole into the earth. This is a blessing that stabilizes the Israelites in their identity as God’s chosen people—and apparently a singular privilege of the priesthood. Why then has this blessing stayed with us, lay members of the Franciscan family? 

Just after Easter this year, I spoke to several discerners for both our lay mission and DC Service Corps programs who had just been received into the Catholic Church. There was a lingering sense in every call that beyond the font, there had to be more to being the Church. You (presumably lay reader) probably recognize that sense in yourself. Perhaps you might even have perceived your place as a layperson as a station of lack, defined more by all the things you can’t do versus the clergy. When those discerners asked, “What’s it like, living in the Casa?” or “What sort of things do lay missioners do?” they were asking after the shape of our blessing. The great asks of the Priestly Blessing—that God make his face shine on us, that God turn his face to us, that God keep us—are all invitations for God to be present among us. Even more importantly, in the same way that a friend’s smile lights you up, the Israelites are being drawn towards the light of God dwelling in their midst. By this light, the invocation to the priests seems less a privilege than an office—a call which might extend to all believers.

FMS’ founder, Fr. Anselm Moons certainly thought so. “Francis… called [his followers] to conversion—not to the priesthood,” he writes in one of the earliest editions of our program’s newsletter. “If he also welcomed priests among the brothers, it was not for their sacramental powers: they too, like other people, needed conversion.” The tremendous political, social, and ecological upheaval that swept me into the DC Service Corps program ten months ago has not abated; I cannot say if it ever will.  Let us, as Francis enjoined Leo, “take these words, and until the day of death guard them carefully.” May God ever turn his face towards us—and may we always find ourselves ready to turn our faces towards God. 

Question for Reflection: Reflect on the Priestly Blessing. How can it stabilize you in your call to be the Church?

Datuin, Jose. Ang Pababago: Peace-Love, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.