It was one of those mystical misty days when the burnished slate of the Albemarle Sound met the white cumulous horizon. It was Saturday morning, May 4th, and I was having a good ol’ time with my friends, Fr. Bob Sawyer and his brother Fr. Stan.
We were standing at dock’s end where it juts into Edenton Bay. The three of us had on our hieratic stoles, waiting for the fleet of the Edenton Yacht Club to come sailing by.
This year, the Edenton Blessing of the Fleet was very well attended. It was remarkable that there was not a single scraping of a gunwhale against the dock as about 25 vessels glided by, accompanied only by the subtle swish of the bow wave. Were it yours truly at the tiller — an nautical tale that should never be told — there would be the crunch of hull and the crack of timber. Sheets would foul, masts and yards would snap. Davy Jones would rise from the depths to collect his due.
Instead, happily, Fr. Bob and Fr. Stan solemnly bestowed the Sign of the Cross, and repeated “Fair winds and following seas” upon each sailor. My task was to shower upon each vessel a blessing of holy water. I had fashioned an aspergillum out of a boxwood branch. I plunged it into a large glass of holy water, and scattered it toward every passing hull and prow.
For a long time, holy water has been at best misunderstood and often the butt of more than a little religious comedy. One of the perennial favorites in this rather obscure category of vaudeville is this riddle: “How do you make holy water? By boiling the hell out of it.”
Well, not actually. Boiling is simply not involved. But a lot of prayer is, and so is action. There is a ritual, and I’m not afraid of that word. The trouble about “ritual” is that it is usually associated with “magic.” And yes, a lot of folks think that this holy water business is just a bunch of hocus pocus, like Harry Potter waving his magic wand.
No, blessing with holy water is not magic at all. Magic is the calling upon an impersonal occultic force from a distance to enact an arbitrary command. Blessing is participation in the good will of the personal God.
Blessing is distinctly personal. It is work. It is a cooperative effort by humanity and divinity. It is at once material and spiritual. God doesn’t do magic. The Creator works by the most intimate direct contact with His creation. And He invites His human servants to participate in His works of grace.
“But does holy water work?” someone asks. Yes, certainly it does. Every prayer “works,” if it is real prayer — that is, if the Loving Father is the God to whom the prayer is directed, and if that prayer is coming from a humble heart. God answers every prayer according to His Will that is only and always good. The difficulty is that often — maybe more often than not — the efficacy of prayer in general, and the blessing with holy water in particular, is veiled from our immediate sight. I can tell you what the meaning of holy water is, and what it will eventually bring about.
But what is exactly happening in the precise moment of the blessing? That is quite beyond my comprehension.
Just what is holy water? Stick it under a microscope, and it is still H2O (along with some other stuff depending upon whether it’s been drawn from the Albemarle Sound or the Chowan River). You can’t physically perceive a spiritual reality, so blessings and other instances of grace will always evade the technological gaze. Which is a good thing.
Holy water is water that, having been blessed, has mystically traversed the ages — from the baptism of the Lord in the Jordan and all the way from the end of the world, from the river that runs through the New Eden, when the New Jerusalem descends to the earth. It is water from the universal transfiguration of all creation into the light of grace, as 1 Corinthians 15:28 states, “when God will be all in all.” The holy water blessing invites and inducts a part of creation, especially a person, into the stream of grace that will eventually become a cosmic tidal wave at the Last Day.
I know. That is fantastically hard to believe. There is nothing in my tale that commends itself to a materialistic “show me” investigation. That’s OK. I’ll bless your boat anyways. In my blessing book, called a “Euchologion,” I have holy water blessings for not only floating vessels, but planes, trains and automobiles. Also vineyards and apiaries, fields at planting and fields at harvest, fruit and flowers, herbs and spices, hearths and stoves, stock animals and small pets, homes and businesses and schools.
Just about everything in creation is up for showers of blessing. I even have a prayer to rid a well that’s been beset with rats. Don’t ask if I’ve ever done that one.
I’ll bless your boat (or whatever) whether you believe it or not, and whether you think you deserve it or not. Heck, I never deserve blessing, but I’ll take it all the same and be thankful.
In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord said Matthew 5:45 that “the rain falls on the just and the unjust.” I’m sure glad He added that bit about the “unjust,” because then I can be included, and so can you.
God’s rain — “latter rain” these days — and His showers of blessing can fall on anyone. He is at work healing and saving, transforming one shadow after another into daylight, every drought into the spring rain.
When Fr. Bob and Fr. Stan and I blessed the fleet, our prayers brought to mind that moment when a storm beset the disciples’ fishing boat on Galilee. Things were so bad that the guys thought they were going to turn hull up and keel over for sure, ready to open up Davy Jones’ locker and climb in.
But then the Creator of sky and sea stood up in the prow. “Peace, be still,” He said. The howling wind hushed immediately, and the shocking waves calmed to a gentle murmur. The small craft advisory was canceled and the red flags were taken down. The Lord of wind and wave transformed the tempest into showers of blessing rain. He transfigured the raging sea of desperation into the still waters of the Good Shepherd.
That is our prayer for every boat, and every thing, and every heart caught in a storm: “May this holy water be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”
Most Popular
Comments / 0