The Priestly Blessing is an Epiphany for those with faith!

 A Meditation on 

the Priestly Blessing

I have always believed in the special graces received when one is privileged to receive the Blessings of a priest. In the beginning of my spiritual journey, (early 1980),  I was given a flyer titled simply “Jesus speaks of his Blessings to Theresa Neumann, Stigmatist of Konnereuth”,  at that time she was not well known in America. Some of the photos of her I saw in a book that I came across later were very graphic, and for a beginner in the spiritual life unsettling.  I decided not to use any of the graphic photos here because it is not the purpose of this post to dwell on the sensational mystical phenomenon.  

Rather, I hope for us to meditate on The Priestly Blessing as another Epiphany, a manifestation of Christ for those who see like the Magi with the eyes of faith. The Magi were inspired by signs in the heavens to follow the star that announced a newborn King. Once they arrived it was faith that revealed the God Man behind the infant lying in the manger. It is our faith that will reveal the Divinity behind “The Blessing” given by the priest today. Seeing the Priest as an alter Christus when he bestows “The Blessings”, After Mass, during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and when the faithful request a blessing from him.

Having said all that, I was happy to finally learn that the cause for beatification Teresa Neumann was introduced. A petition asking for her beatification was signed by 40,000 people, and in 2005, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Bishop of Regensburg, formally opened the Vatican proceedings for her beatification.   I shy away from apparitions that do not have the full approval of the church and  now I could share with others this Meditation on the Priestly Blessing. That really enriched my own spiritual life.

 

When I came across these words of Jesus to the Stigmatist Teresa Neumann after reading it I was in awe of the priest and the graces he confers with his blessing.   I always tried not to miss an opportunity  to ask for “The Blessing” when I was in the presence of a priest.  A Blessing as an act of charity for myself, for the priest and those in the room with me.  An act of charity to remind the priest of the dignity of his state. I think after you read the words Jesus is said to have spoken to Teresa Neumann you also will have a greater appreciation of the Priestly Blessing and request it more often from your priests. And, if you’re a priest I hope you will freely give your blessing as an act of charity and mercy for your people.

How many poor priests do not realize the power they have in their identification with Christ. If they really believed the power behind the words: “May the Blessing of almighty God descend upon you and remain with you forever! They would not stop offering “The Blessing” to help the souls God has placed in their charge. 'The Blessing' have great powers over the spirit of darkness, THEY dispel and limit the attacks of the evil spirit around them in their parish and in the world! 

We commonly call "The Blessing" his blessing. We most often ask when we desire a blessing from the priest: “Father Will you give me your blessing?” It is Christ’s Blessing, Jesus  is blessing us  through the priest. An EPIPHANY for those who see with the eyes of faith. This Epiphany also takes places during Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament and when we attend Mass and receive Holy Communion.  It is Christ who offers and Christ who we receive and at the end Christ who gives "THE BLESSING" The graces bestowed on us are given according to the devotion of the receiver So it is with the each “Blessing.” we are privileged to receive by the priest. 

How many priests today send Blessings to their parishioners after they say their Divine Office or before going to sleep at night? How many priests even say the Divine Office?  I sat next to a bishop on an airplane once and I was filled with joy as I observed him bless the city we were departing from and again he also blessed the city that we arrived in before we landed. How many priests bestow these graces upon the world? How blessed a person is who belongs to a parish whose pastor realizes his dignity as an alter Christus and lives it. God please grant us many Holy Priests give them this light to lead deeper spiritual lives. May the following meditation aide us to rediscover the Power the Priest has when he confers The Blessing!

Jesus Speaks of His Blessing

(To Teresa Neuman Stigmatist)

"My dear Child, I wish to teach you to receive My Blessing with fervor. Realize that something vast takes place when you receive the Blessing of my Priest. The Blessing is an outpouring of My Divine holiness. Open your soul and let it become holy through the Blessing. The Blessing is a heavenly dew for the soul, through which all that is done can be made fruitful….Through the power to bless, I have given the priest the power to open the treasury of My Heart and to pour out from It the 'rain' of graces on souls. When the priest blesses, I bless. Then a vast stream of graces from My Sacred Heart flows into a soul to its fullest capacity. By recollection, keep your heart open, in order not to lose the benefit of the Blessing. Through My Blessing, you receive the grace to love, strength to endure suffering, and assistance for body and soul."

 

It is a great privilege when you

are permitted to receive 
the Blessing!"

"My holy Blessing contains all help for the necessities of mankind. Through the Blessing you are given the strength and desire to seek good, to shun evil, and to enjoy the protection of My children against the powers of darkness. It is a great privilege when you are permitted to receive the Blessing. You cannot comprehend how much mercy I extend through it to you. Therefore, never receive the Blessing in a  matter-of-fact or thoughtless way. As poor as you are before receiving the Blessing, you are rich after receiving it." 

"I regret that the Blessing of the Church is so little prized and so seldom received"

"I regret that the Blessing of the Church is so little prized and so seldom received. Your good will is strengthened through the Blessing, your undertakings receive My special Providence, your weakness is overcome by my power, your thoughts and intentions are spiritualized, and all bad influences neutralized…I have given My Blessing vast power. It proceeds from the unending love of My Sacred Heart. The greater the zeal with which the Blessing is given and received, the greater its efficacy,"

"It is all the Same Whether One 
or Many Receive the Blessing"

"Whether a child is blessed or the whole world simultaneously, the Blessing is far greater than a thousand worlds. Reflect that God is immense - infinitely immense. How small are all things in comparison to Him! It is all the same whether one or many receive the Blessing. This does not matter, for I give to each according to the measure of his or her confidence (or faith). Since I am infinitely rich in all good, you are permitted to receive without measure. You cannot hope too much from my Blessing; all will exceed your fondest expectations."

 "My child protect & help

all who give Blessings "

"Esteem highly what has been blessed; then you will please Me, your God. As often as you are blessed, you are united closer to Me, sanctified anew, healed with, and protected with the love of My Sacred Heart. Often I keep hidden the workings of My Blessing so that it is known only in eternity. Often it appears that Blessings have no results. But wonderful are the workings of the Blessing - even the seemingly fruitless results are a blessing in disguise through the holy Blessing. These are often mysteries of My Providence, which I do not wish to manifest." 

"My Blessings often produce 
effects unknown to the soul"

"Therefore, have great confidence in this outpouring of My Sacred Heart, and reflect earnestly on this favor to you (that the apparent results are hidden from you)…Receive the holy Blessing sincerely, for the graces of the Blessing find entrance only into a humble heart. Receive it with a good will and with the intention to become better; then will the Blessing penetrate to the depths of your heart and will produce its effects."

"Be a child of the Blessing; then you yourself will be 
A Blessing for Others!"

Short Bio Teresa Neumann

Teresa Neuman has attained today a place in popular piety. Born on Good Friday in 1892, an act of Divine Providence showing forth the future mission the Lord would give to her. She died on September 18, 1962. The decade in which the 3^rd secret of Fatima was asked to be revealed and at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. On September 11, 1962, In a speech to the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko warns that an American attack on Cuba could mean war with the Soviet Union.

During the Third Reich, Therese Neumann was the target of ridicule and defamation, as the Nazis knew about her dissenting views and feared her growing popularity. She was observed by the Gestapo. She was never physically harmed, though her family home, parish church and priest's house all received direct attacks. She encouraged Fritz Gerlich to continue his opposition to Hitler and his national-socialist party. Gerlich was subsequently killed for his opposition.

At the age of 20 she was in an accident and became blind and paralyzed. She received a miraculous healing in 1923 through prayers to St. Therese of Lisieux. Since this time Theresa has not eaten any foods or liquids except for one small consecrated wafer a day. [Her total fast lasted from the age of twenty-five until her passing away, thirty-nine years later] On September 18, 1962, from Cardiac Arrest.   The stigmata, or sacred wounds of Christ, began to appear on her head, heart, hands and feet every Friday while she experienced the passion of Christ.

Paramahansa Yogananda visited her and wrote about her case in his book Autobiography of a Yogi, published in 1946. He wrote an entire chapter, Therese Neumann, The Catholic Stigmatist of Bavaria, which reverently gives a vivid first-hand description of one of her Friday Passion trances. He wrote of her: "I realized at once that her strange life is intended by God to reassure all Christians of the historical authenticity of Jesus' life and crucifixion as recorded in the New Testament, and to dramatically display the ever-living bond between the Galilean Master and his devotees."

Theresa, was once asked if America will experience war on its soil, "No, but at the end of this century America will be destroyed economically by a series of natural disasters." Friends, Could this be a consequence of America turning away from God and the Commandments?

Links for more information to Help our priests help us!  

 
Particles of the Blessed Sacrament the Eternal life giving Gold Dust!  

A Call to Eucharistic Reparation Fatima begins and will end with the Eucharist!  

Penance! Penance! Penance! Why are the Shepherds Silent?

A Priest Never Belongs to Himself He is to be Configured to Christ!


THE AMAZING LIFE - STORY OF THERESA NEUMANN pdf book

Awake Mankind for your sake God has become man! Bethlehem the House of Bread!

"Awake you who sleep, rise up from the dead and Christ will enlighten you! We would suffer everlasting unhappiness and would not have returned to life if God had not shared in our death, We would certainly perish if God had not taken on our flesh and became man. So let us rejoice in the birth of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate this festive day for He who is the great eternal day came from the endless day of eternity into our own short day of time. For what greater grace could God had made to dawn on us than to make his only son become man. He became man so that man in his turn could become sons and daughters of God! Let us as Christians remember our great dignity! Now that we share in God's own nature, let us pray for grace not return by sin to our former base conditions. Let us bear in mind who is our head and whose body we are members. Do not forget we have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God's kingdom. Through the sacrament of baptism we are temples of the Holy Spirit. Let us not drive away so great a guest by our evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for our liberty is brought by the blood of Christ." 
Paraphrased from the Office of Readings for Dec 24  a Sermon by St Augustine titled Truth has arisen from the Earth and on  Dec 25th a Sermon by St. Leo the Great, Christian remember your Dignity.

Bethlehem the House of Bread

The old Hebrew name bêth lehem,

meaning "house of bread"

has survived till the present  day!

Image from  Holy Cards Museum

The Infancy Narratives 
surrounding the Birth of Jesus foreshadow the Blessed Sacrament!

 After Jesus was born Our Lady wrapped him in swaddling-clothes and laid him in a manger, a place where animals were fed because there was no room for them in the inn. The manger represents the wood of the cross his future sacrifice in time for our sins. The manger also foreshadows the altars in every Catholic church.  Here Jesus becomes incarnate again, this time hidden not in the flesh of a human nature but in the form of bread.  At the words of consecration during every Holy Mass Jesus is born again and immolated.  We are present at Bethlehem and at Calvary

Imagine that brute animals ate from the manger the creator of the world slept in! This scene showed us that God would feed his own creatures with the manna of His own Body and Blood so that we would be capable of entering into eternal life with Him. What a great gift of sheer grace for mortal man to become immortal with God!

  

The Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote: “Material food first of all turns itself into the person who eats it, and as a consequence, restores his losses and increases his vital energies. Spiritual food, on the other hand, turns the person who eats it into Itself, and thus the proper effect of the Eucharistic sacrament is the conversion of man into Christ, so that he may no longer live for himself, but that Christ may live in Him. We become sons and daughters of God.  St. Augustine, recorded similar words which he heard in the Spirit from the Lord. We find them in the account of his conversion, the Confession: “I am the food of grown men. Grow, and you shall feed upon me. You will not change me into yourself, as you change food into your flesh, but you will be changed into me!”

 He came unto His own 

and His own received Him not! 

"This is the judgment: that the light has entered the world, and men have preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil. Everybody who does wrong hates the light and keeps away from it, for fear his deeds may be exposed. But everybody who is living by the truth will come to the light to make it plain that all he has done has been done through God." John 3:19-21

Church of the Nativity the star  indicates where Jesus was born

This verse is more applicable today than it was at the time of Our Lord's birth! Today at Christmas it is in the Blessed Sacrament that we can say that His own receive him not!  Many take no heed of the gift God offers of Himself to men in this sacrament.  Consequently, they do not approach the table of the Lord to be spiritually fed. Others receive him but are not prepared through sacramental confession so they are not free from sin. They do not recognize the body and blood of Christ the Word, the second person of the Trinity, who became flesh to unite himself to our flesh. They do not discern THE HIDDEN JESUS underneath the sacramental veil. Sin has blinded them.  Yes they receive but the effects on their souls are different. Those prepared to enter into communion with Christ receive unto eternal life.  Those: "Who eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment (damnation) to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord."         1 Corinthians 11:27

Jesus in his public ministry

    Calls himself the Bread of Life!

John 6:48-53

I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eats of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. 

If you read further in this passage you see that many of the disciples think this a “hard teaching” and they “walked with him no more.”  And Jesus let them leave. He did not stop to tell them he was only kidding he let them leave. Afterward, Jesus turned to the Apostles and asked if they would leave also? Peter responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.” Unfortunately, we see this exact scenario today. Many Christians have left  the Church  or worse remain within her ranks and desecrate the Blessed Sacrament.   Intentional  desecration is not only a mortal sin but also incurs the penalty of excommunication latae sententiae. They don’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and are destroying the faith of others by their bad examples. 

  

The battle of the light 
against the darkness!

 You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. Ps 90:8

Christmas is a joyful season  of light for those with faith. But we cannot pretend like one sleeping that the world continues to sit on a precipice prefer darkness to light. So many dangers stand before us in the world. Disasters man made and God sent in nature.  Will we heed the Angels warnings at Fatima in 1916 of the need to make reparation to Our Eucharistic Lord for the outrages, sacrileges and in differences by which He is offended? 

Will we hear the plea from the Heart of Mary: " To amend our lives and stop offending the Lord for He is already grievously offended? Or, will we go merrily on our way without a care, right up to the chastisements sure to come, prefigured in the miracle of the sun. 

Let us Awake Now 
let Christ the true Light 
of the world enlighten you!

Once more let us hear the cry to Awake. Awake now, you who sleep, rise up from the death of sin and Christ will enlighten you! We would suffer everlasting unhappiness and would not have hope to return to life if God had not shared in our death. Let us prepare the way for the new spring time of faith that Bl. John Paul II and other holy souls saw from a distance. Let us prepare first and foremost by Eucharistic reparation. It is a spiritual battle we are in and we  must use the spiritual weapons the church has given us. Including the Rosary our spiritual machine gun. If every Catholic committed to one 5 decade rosary every day that battle would be won. Families give up an hour of TV and pray for each others needs for the church and our country. We have to account to God for time ill spent!

God himself will fight for us the battle to dispel the darkness in the world. But we must prove ourselves worthy of His interventions.  God will restore the dignity of human life from conception to natural death.  The devil hates Imago Dei--The image of God in man.  God will help us but we must help Him.  Let us first restore Him to his royal throne in our parish churches and chapels.  Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus who became flesh and slept in a manger in a stable and now dwells with us till the end of time.Jesus the second person of the Holy Trinity---He is not a piece of bread to be trampled under our feet because we no longer recognize Him in the particles that fall from our hands.  or worse in the particles we leave behind in unpurified pyx's and those who do so carry God into unspeakable places. May God forgive our spiritual blindness. Pray for priests and for bishops who do nothing and let the evils continue.  The priests for those they appoint to be Eucharistic ministers and bishops for all the Eucharistic Ministers in their dioceses. They will have to account for every lost particle on judgement day.

Fatima Begins and Will End with the Eucharist

Particles of the Blessed Sacrament   

Let us Pray  

O most loving and Blessed Infant  Jesus, great God Lord of Heaven and Earth, who clothed and hid your divine majesty under a wonderful semblance of a child, and hide yourself today in our tabernacles day and night for our Divine food and consolation in this valley of tears. Your divine presence before whom the powers of Heaven tremble, and  might kings of the earth bow, and evil spirits under the earth must bend. You became little as a child and in the Host that we might love you more ardently and serve you more faithfully That we may follow your example in childlike purity and love. I a poor sinner love you as the highest and most loving God and entrust myself to your infinite goodness. Teach me Jesus after your example to love humility and to crush my pride; to desire to grow in virtue and in childlike trust. Direct me Jesus and rule me, make me virtuous, so that I may please You and be little in this world and great in the next. Jesus meek and humble of heart! Make our hearts like unto thine! 

The light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never 
(will never) put it out.  John 1:5

Christmas Blessings to one and all! 

Also see:
A Call to Eucharistic Reparation Fatima Begins and ends with Eucharist!

The Eucharistic Miracle of Gruaro, Italy Part 1

In Gruaro, Italy there is another Eucharistic Miracle with a forgotten particle of the Host!

The Eucharistic Miracle of Gruaro Italy, 1294 Part 2  
 Revised Priests and Religious Help stop the Abuses!


Take and Drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Repair their crimes and console your God!

Eucharistic Miracles Vatican International Exhibition  A Photographic Exhibition of Church Approved Eucharistic Miracles from 750 A.D. - 2001