Blessings

[Dewi Sant]

What are blessings?
Why are things blessed?


I know this may sound very immature of me but I have just accepted the whole notion of blessings this whole time (as long as I remember) without actually asking what a blessing is. (and I am not talking about CF currency)


For example, I have an unblessed icon of the theotokos.
(which I think I will bring with me to church tomorrow)
It appears no different to the other icons I have.
It means nothing less to me than the other icons I have.
Yet it is not blessed.

What happens in the blessing?
Why bless icons?
Why bless?

I am sorry, I feel really stupid asking this question. I feel like I am asking something extremely basic.
Maybe this question doesn't need answering, but I ask it anyway.


Christos Anesti

Chris

[nutroll]

There are many opinions on this subject. I have heard and read from a number of sources that an icon does not need to be blessed. One reason given for this is that an icon is prayed over as it is being painted and that it is blessed in the act of being painted. I'm not sure that this would really apply to prints as I don't know whether a person mounting prints prays over them. Also, as an iconographer myself, I can tell you that i have my icons blessed because I don't want to presume that an icon is blessed by my work.

However, an icon is supposed to be the work of the Holy Spirit working through an iconographer, and the holy image created does not need blessing because of the work of the Holy Spirit and by the nature of the holy image presented. Again, I can't say for certain what the Holy Spirit did versus when something was my own doing and therefore inferior, so I get icons blessed just to be sure.

Then there are actual blessing 'ceremonies.' I always took my icons to the priest to have them blessed by means of prayer and a sprinkling with holy water.

For some, blessing of an icon can mean placing the icon on the altar for 40 days. Usually the priest will tell you what he does with icons. I don't really see why an icon needs to sit on the altar for that long when others would say that it is blessed before it even reaches the altar. hope that helps....

[Dewi Sant]

Thanks for the reply.


I don't want to be without my icon for 40 days! :(.


It is a mounted print that I bought in Canterbury Cathedral giftshop.

It is my first (and therefore most sentimental) icon. I bought it days after my first divine liturgy.

my others, I have had given to me. But they are already blessed.


I don't have any originals. But it isn't the object itself but what is in the heart of the person who prays.

[Dust and Ashes]

At our parish, things to be blessed are usually kept on the altar during the Divine Liturgy then sprinkled with holy water. I'm sure there is more involved but this is all that I know for certain.

[choirfiend]

Blessing something is giving it in dedication for the use of God's worship. Water is just water. When blessed, dedicated to God, it becomes holy water, a conduit for our healing. Blessing what we have is a way of re-acknowledging that it is truly God's in the first place. When something is blessed, special care must be taken to treat it with the respect that we treat things that are sanctified, holy (remember first and foremost that we ourselves are blessed, and that other people are blessed). We bless water, oil, flowers, fruit, grain, bread, wine, incense, icons, buildings, cars, crosses, and most importantly, people!

[Dewi Sant]

I brought the icon with me to DL today and father blessed it.



This Saturday we are making a pilgramige to Ladyewell, an ancient English shrine where the waters are blessed.

It is out in the country but I live on the same lane as it.
I have never been inside the grounds but I am looking forward to it.

[Happy Orthodox]

Hey, I'm a Russian 3-year-old convert, and I still wonder why do we bless things? :scratch: It's not like I'm a Protestant trying to get over a rational Western baggage, but it's always been a mystery to me.

I know that there are different kinds of blessing. And also I heard that icons are already holy by the merit of them depicting a holy person. Pictures of holy people are holy by default. What I was always thinking (dunno why, never asked, though) that it is the paper or the board on which the icon is depicted gets also sanctified, so that to give the holy image a holy frame... :sorry: But don't quote me on that...

[repentant]

40 days in the Altar is the recommended way to bless an icon. But depending on where it's from and who made it, it can be already bleseed. If a Monk wrote it, it's already blessed because the whole time (just about) he was writing it, he was praying. You don't really need to have an icon written by a Monk blessed.