The blessing prayer to obtain every form of grace
"... Bless, since you have been called to inherit the blessing ..." (1 Peter 3,9)
Prayer is impossible if you don't have a sense of praise, which implies the ability to be surprised.
The blessing (= ber 'ha) occupies a prominent place in the Old Testament.
It is like "a communication of life by Jahweh".
The whole account of creation is punctuated by the blessings of the Creator.
Creation is seen as a grandiose "work of life": something good and beautiful at the same time.
Blessing is not a sporadic act, but an incessant action of God.
It is, so to speak, the sign of God's favor impressed on the creature.
In addition to an action that flows continuously, unstoppable, the blessing is effective.
It does not represent a vague wish, but produces what it expresses. This is why the blessing (like its opposite, the curse) is always considered in the irreversible Bible: it cannot be retracted or canceled.
It unfailingly achieves the goal.
The blessing is mainly "descending". It is only God who has the power to bless because He is the source of life.
Man, when he blesses, does it in the name of God, as his representative.
Typical, in this regard, the wonderful blessing contained in the book of numbers (6,22-27):
"... Bless the Lord and protect you. May the Lord shine His face upon you and be propitious to you. May the Lord turn His face on you and grant you peace ... "
But there is also an "ascending" blessing.
Thus man can bless God in prayer. And that's another interesting aspect.
In essence, the blessing means this: everything comes from God and everything must return to him in thanksgiving, in praise; but above all, everything must be used according to the plan of God, which is a plan of salvation.
Let us fix the attitude of Jesus in the episode of the multiplication of the loaves: "... He took the loaves and, after giving thanks, he distributed them ..." (Jn 6,11:XNUMX)
Giving thanks means admitting that what you have is a gift and must be recognized as such.
After all, blessing, as an act of thanks, involves a twofold restitution: to God (recognized as Donor) and to the brothers (recognized as recipients, share with us the gift).
With the blessing the new man is born.
He is the man of blessing, who is in harmony with all creation.
The land belongs to the "myths", that is, to those who claim nothing.
The blessing, therefore, represents a boundary line that divides the economic man from the liturgical man: the first keeps to himself, the other gives himself.
The economic man has wealth, the liturgical man, that is, the Eucharistic man, is master of himself.
When a man blesses he is never alone: the whole cosmos joins his tiny word of blessing (Canticle of Daniel 3,51 - Psalm 148).
The blessing commits us to use the language in one way.
The Apostle James, with hot sentences, denounces an unfortunately very frequent abuse: “... With the tongue we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men made in the likeness of God. It is from the same mouth that blessing and curse come out. It doesn't have to be that way, my brothers. Maybe the spring can make fresh and bitter water flow from the same jet, can my brothers make a fig tree produce olives or a vine produce figs? Not even a salty spring can produce fresh water ... "(Jas. 3,9-12)
The language is therefore "consecrated" through the blessing. And unfortunately we allow ourselves to "desecrate" it with slander, gossip, lies, murmurs.
We use the mouth for two operations of opposite sign and we think everything is regular.
We don't realize that the two are mutually exclusive. That one cannot, at the same time, "say good" about God and "say bad" about one's neighbor.
Language cannot express blessing, which is life, and at the same time throw poison that threatens and even turns off life.
The God I meet when I "go up to him" in prayer is the God who obliges me to "go down", to look for others, to transmit a message of blessing, that is, of life.
Maria's example
It is providential that a prayer of Our Lady has remained: the Magnificat.
Thus the mother of the Lord acts as our teacher in the prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
It is nice to have Mary as a guide, because it was she who taught Jesus to pray; it was she who taught him the first "berakòth", the Jewish thanksgiving prayers.
It was she who made Jesus mark the first formulas of blessing, as did every mom and dad in Israel.
Nazareth soon had to become the first thanksgiving school. As in every Jewish family he thanked himself from the "sunrise until his sunset".
The prayer of thanksgiving is the most beautiful school of life, because it heals us from our superficiality, makes us grow in relationship with God, in gratitude and in love, educates us deeply in faith.
THE SONG OF THE SOUL
“Be able to fill the land of Mercy!
Fill all the solitudes of today, all the
absences of love, all the nostalgia of welcome.
Be hands of resurrection.
Have the joy of the Risen Christ
and present among us;
the joy of prayer that swears on the impossible.
The joy of faith, of the grain of wheat,
sown, perhaps for a long time,
in the darkness of the earth, torn by death,
from persecution, from pain,
and which becomes, now,
ear of bread, spring ".
(Sister Maria Rosa Zangara, founder of the daughters of Mercy and the Cross)